WASHINGTON — WUSA9 has obtained new information about the release of a man accused of firing 26 shots from an AR-15 rifle into a DC Street. Court documents reveal the judge went against his own instincts to keep the 18-year-old defendant in jail before trial, after repeated pleas from his public defender to send him home.
The 141-page transcript from a court hearing on May 3 revealed Magistrate Judge Llyod Nolan initially thought it was a bad idea to grant pre-trial release to 18-year-old Amonte Moody, accused of shooting at an SUV driving away on Independence Avenue in Southeast on April 22.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office from the District of Columbia says three different cameras captured the incident.
“To see something like that on video, that’s what we see on the news all the time,” Judge Nolan said. “The concern I have is that the community is affected by something that someone does like this.”
Incredibly, no one was injured. But one neighbor tells WUSA9 the family’s car was hit by one of the bullets.
Moody is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm with a crime of violence.
In a hearing last Friday, Judge Nolan found probable cause for the case to go to trial, and seemed likely to send Moody back to jail to await trial. A prosecutor told the judge, “I think we all know that we’re lucky that this wasn’t a homicide.”
Judge Nolan agreed.
"The concern I have is that this action could have killed someone," the judge said.
But court transcripts show Moody's public defender, Kavya Naini, continually argued against the idea of sending Moody back to jail. She initially asked the judge to release him with a GPS monitor, curfew and “activities” during the day, including finishing his high school diploma and job training arranged by his aunt.
Naini also told the judge Moody had a supportive family, many of whom were in court, that were willing to take him in and help monitor him while on pre-trial release.
Prosecutors pushed back telling the judge “all of these were available to him when he decided to unload 26 rounds out of an AR-15 in the middle of the street.”
And again, Judge Nolan seemed to agree, saying, “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.”
But eight different times, Naini rejects the judge's arguments, saying Moody had no prior criminal history, had a “a developing brain” and that his personality changed after his grandfather died. The attorney pleaded with the judge that Moody had already been in jail for two weeks and that “two weeks of incarceration is not where he wants to end up again.”
Eventually, Judge Nolan relented. He released Moody on 24/7 home incarceration at this stepfather's house in Maryland, with a GPS ankle monitor.
The judged warned “the concern I have is for the safety of the community.”
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has filed an emergency order to reverse the magistrate judge’s decision to grant Moody pre-trial release. That hearing will happen May 15.