A judge in Washington, D.C., has come under fire after releasing on bail a teenager accused of firing dozens of shots from an AR-15 on a busy street.
Lloyd U. Nolan, Jr., a magistrate judge who sits on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, released 18-year-old Amonte Moody ahead of his trial even though he is accused of firing more than two dozen rounds at a car full of people, Fox News reported. Moody has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and more, the New York Post reported.
The attack happened on April 22 on Independence Avenue in D.C., with security footage allegedly showing Moody firing the weapon.
Nolan released Moody even after he acknowledged that the teen’s alleged actions “could have killed someone” and stated there was probable cause to send the case to trial, according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by WUSA9.
Moody’s public defender requested he be released with GPS monitoring and claimed the teen had a supportive family that would keep track of him before his trial.
Prosecutors argued that Moody had access to this supportive family prior to his alleged shooting spree, and Nolan appeared to agree.
“For something to escalate to the point where you feel you need to go into the middle of the street and let off 26 shots, I don’t know what set of circumstances, short of incarceration, I can find,” Nolan said.
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Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. have filed an emergency order to reverse Nolan’s decision and place Moody back in jail ahead of his trial.
Nolan, a self-described “woke” judge, set his Facebook profile to private after Fox contacted him, the outlet reported. Nolan’s social media accounts reportedly show that he is heavily involved in leftist politics, has promoted Black Lives Matter, and donated to a fundraiser that supported a professor tied to Democrat mega-donor George Soros.
That donation went to Gideon’s Promise, which was founded in 2007 on behalf of a professor through a fellowship from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The organization claims on its website that its mission is to “transform the criminal justice system by building a movement of public defenders who provide equal justice for marginalized communities.”