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SDNY COURTHOUSE, Feb 18 – Elaine Carberry and Corey Smith were charged with lighting on fire an NYPD Homeless Outreach Unit van on University Place and 13th Street on July 15-16, 2020 with a bottle of Patron tequila.

They were released on $100,000 bond; Smith traveled to Washington DC from August 27 to 30, 2020.

 On October 21, 2020 U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Lewis J. Liman held a proceeding "by Zoom Video Conference." Inner City Press covered it.

   Federal Defenders suggested reconvening in 60 days, to review this Patron tequila discovery.

On September 22, 2021 Inner City Press covered the guilty pleas. below.

And on February 19, 2022, Judge Liman sentenced each to six months in prison, six months home detention. Inner City Press live tweeted it, thread here:

OK - now sentencing of Elaine Carberry, who pled guilty to torching NYPD van during George Floyd protests in 2020.

 Carberry supporter: Your Honor, please don't take Elaine from us. People in those uprisings in 2020, for the protection of black lives, I don't know the violence they endured. Elaine's sole focus as a survivor of violence is on alleviating the suffering of others

Judge Liman: Ms. Carberry, do you wish to be heard? Carberry: I'm devastated at the harm I have caused, and I am further devastated the harm I could have caused. I have made a terribly dangerous mistake, an error in judgment.

 Carberry: If you extend mercy and faith to us, as a community, it will be extended evermore. So many have moved through this experience with me. We've all learned a lot from this. A multi-generational network.

Carberry: It was a dangerous mistake I made. I caused a dangerous distraction. The circumstances remain. The work remains. Black lives matters. Black dreams matter. Black loves matter. I'm sorry to be so off topic

 Judge Liman: I'm going to take a recess then come back out and impose sentence. Let me say that I don't think the circumstances justify the conduct. But I will consider your work in the community. Not politically, but to extend oneself is a positive.

Now Judge Liman is back, to impose sentence. Judge Liman: The sentencing guidelines indicate 3 years for arson by explosives damaging government facilities. It's entitled to consideration. You lit fire to a van filled with gasoline.

Judge Liman: By destroying a police van you caused a 2d type of harm - to people you did not know and who did nothing to harm you. The people who were serviced by that police van were innocent people.

Judge Liman: This was a van that was used for the homeless. Sure there are officers who violate the law, just as there are in every part of society. I reject the characterization that the officers were doing any harm to your or your co-defendant [Corey Smith]

Judge Liman: I appreciate you committed this crime out of frustration, at an extraordinary time for our country. That is why I find it an aberrant act. The US depends on free speech & people like you becoming civically engaged. You are not being punished for that.

 Judge Liman: In anarchy, the powerful dominate the powerless. On the other hands, the letters on your behalf describe you as caring. The same adjectives appear: 12 cousins, classmates at Brown...  I will vary downward

 Judge Liman: But I will impose a sentence of imprisonment. There must be respect for the law. Let me turn to Defendant Smith. I cannot find my way to a non-incarceratory sentence. If there was no prison time, it would send the wrong message.

Judge Liman: Every day in this courthouse we sentence people to prison and take them away from their families. Many of these defendants enjoy less privileged positions in society than you two. You are on the way to a successful career in the arts. Judge Liman: Your passion to protect others led you to harm others. I will now state the sentence I intend to impose. Ms. Carberry, I'm going to sentence you to 1 year of confinement. 6 months in prison, then three years of supervised release, the first 6 at home

Judge Liman: I'm going to impose a $14,000 fine... 10% of your income until it's paid. Mr. Smith, I give you the same: six months in prison, six months home detention and like her, 400 hours of community service 

[Surrender will be June 20, 2022, with DOJ consent]

From September 22, 2021: Carberry in her allocuation said on July 15, 2020 amid transnational outrage at attacks on Black life, she had tried to light an NYPD vehicle on fire with "hair spray or hand sanitizer, I'm sorry I don't remember which."

 This was not included in the DOJ's press release: "Audrey Strauss, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that COREY SMITH and ELAINE CARBERRY pled guilty to conspiring to burn a marked New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) Homeless Outreach Unit van in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York, New York, in July 2020.  SMITH and CARBERRY pled guilty today before U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman, to whom the case is assigned.      U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss stated: “As they admitted in court today, Corey Smith and Elaine Carberry committed arson, deliberately setting fire to an NYPD van, then minutes later returning to the vehicle and – once again using an accelerant – ensuring its complete destruction.  Now Smith and Carberry await sentencing for their willful and wanton destruction of a law enforcement vehicle that had been used for outreach to homeless New Yorkers.” Then again, the allocution...

The case is US v. Smith et al., 20-cr-544 (Liman)

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