Federal charges in NYPD firebombing case called draconian

NEW YORK — Dozens of former prosecutors are questioning the government’s handling of a case against two lawyers hit with charges that could put them in prison for nearly 50 years for torching an empty New York City police vehicle last month. Fifty-six former federal prosecutors urged the court in a written brief to reject the government’s efforts to keep the attorneys behind bars as they await trial, calling it “contrary both to the law and to our collective decades of experience.” Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn defended their request to keep the lawyers jailed pending trial, saying they violated their oaths and crossed a sacred line by targeting the police. “Committing these crimes required essentially a fundamental change in mindset.” The appellate panel did not rule on whether to release the lawyers on bail but expressed horror at the firebombing, with one judge calling “the whole case unimaginable.” Several former prosecutors not involved with the case told The Associated Press the prosecution appeared to be based more on politics than public safety. “This seems more than anything like scare tactics and trumped-up charges by the federal government.” Lucy Lang, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, called the mandatory prison sentences extreme and “a relic of a bygone era of draconian policies that have hurt families and communities for decades.” Amid clashes between police and protesters on May 30, surveillance cameras recorded Rahman, a 31-year-old human rights lawyer, hurling what prosecutors described as a Molotov cocktail into a police vehicle, setting fire to its console. “They are criminals and they will be treated as such.” Defense attorney Paul Schechtman, who represents Rahman, said the attorneys got caught up in the passion of the demonstration but still “had enough sense about them to pick their target so that no one would be harmed.” Quoting a phrase often attributed to Robert Morgenthau, the former longtime Manhattan district attorney, Schechtman said the young attorneys were at worst guilty of “stupidity in the first degree.” “It is one night where really fine people lost their way,” Schechtman said.