A man who was captured on video as he leaped over a judge’s bench and lunged at her in a Las Vegas courtroom earlier this year has been sentenced to decades in prison.
The man, Deobra Redden, 31, was sentenced on Tuesday to between 26 and 65 years in a Nevada prison for the attack on Judge Mary Kay Holthus of Clark County District Court on Jan. 3, according to court records. In September, he cited mental illness in pleading guilty to attempted murder and other charges, including battery by a prisoner.
The attack drew national attention because a courtroom video recorded the scene as Mr. Redden ran up and lunged over the bench and onto the judge, causing the flags behind the bench to fall.
The attack injured Judge Holthus, a court marshal and the judge’s law clerk, officials said. The judge, who was 62 at the time, was treated for injuries and able to return to work.
The episode happened as Judge Holthus was about to sentence Mr. Redden on an April 2023 battery charge, to which he had previously pleaded guilty. A few days after the episode, Judge Holthus sentenced him to 19 to 48 months in prison on that charge.
In court on Tuesday, Mr. Redden pleaded for leniency and said that he had not intended to kill Judge Holthus, according to KLAS-TV.
“I’m not making excuses for my actions, but I’m saying I’m not a bad person and I know that I did not intend to kill Mary Kay Holthus,” he said at the hearing. “I know I cared about her well being.”
Judge Susan Johnson of the Eighth Judicial District Court Clark County, who handed down the sentence, said, “It was not just retaliation or an attack on Judge Holthus,” it was also an attack on the judiciary.”
Judge Holthus did not speak at the hearing, but John Giordani, the chief deputy district lawyer, read a statement on her behalf.
“He made a conscious decision to kill me and made every effort to succeed,” the statement said, according to KLAS. “If he had his way, he’d be facing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for murder.”
Carl Arnold, a lawyer for Mr. Redden, did not immediately respond to inquiries on Wednesday.
Mr. Arnold previously said that at the time of the attack Mr. Redden had not been taking medication that had been prescribed for his diagnosed schizophrenia, according to The Associated Press.
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