In a dramatic hearing on Thursday, a federal judge sentenced a corporate attorney who firebombed a police car during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests to a year in jail, arguing that his prestigious education — boarding school, Princeton, a law degree from New York University — should have rendered him a peacekeeper, not an instigator.

"You're not one of the oppressed. You're one of the privileged," senior Eastern District of New York Judge Brian Cogan told Colinford Mattis, even as he expressed admiration for what the 35-year-old had accomplished in his life.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year legal battle that saw Mattis and his co-defendant, Urooj Rahman, become symbols of the nation's political tumult and divisions. Spanning two presidential administrations, their case saw competing imperatives play out in public and in the courtroom, as well as in the media.

[…] The Justice Department under then-President Donald Trump sought to put them away for at least 45 years. But then Joe Biden became president, and in both cases the Justice Department [under Merrick Garland] settled for much less. They ended up pleading guilty last summer to conspiracy to commit arson. Both will lose their law licenses.