On January 3, 2024, a routine sentencing in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas collapsed into a chaotic assault that was captured on courtroom cameras and later viewed around the world. Defendant Deobra Delone Redden, then 30, was before Judge Mary Kay Holthus on an attempted-battery case stemming from a prior attack with a baseball bat. He had pleaded guilty in November 2023 and asked the court for probation, saying he was trying to change. Holthus, citing his lengthy record of felonies and misdemeanors, indicated she would send him to prison instead.
What followed lasted only seconds. Redden, who was not shackled at that stage of the hearing, shouted an expletive, vaulted a defense table, and launched himself over the roughly four-foot wooden bench in what court officials later called a “Superman-style” leap. He landed on Holthus, grabbed her hair, and struggled with her as papers, monitors, and an American flag on the bench were knocked aside. Officers, a court marshal, Holthus’s law clerk, and others rushed behind the bench to pull him off. Spectators can be heard gasping and shouting on the recording.
Holthus, 62, fell back against a wall and suffered injuries but was not hospitalized. She returned to work the next day. A marshal was treated for a gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder. Redden was immediately taken into custody. Additional charges followed, including attempted murder of an older person, battery on a protected person, and related counts. Prosecutors said he grabbed the judge, pulled her hair, and put his hands around her throat or struck her head. After the fight, he reportedly told corrections officers he had tried to kill her.
Security at the next appearance was extreme: shackles, orange mitts, and a spit hood. Holthus completed the original sentencing, imposing 19 to 48 months on the earlier battery case and making clear she would not change the sentence interrupted by the attack. Redden’s defense later said he had a schizophrenia diagnosis and had not been taking prescribed medication. In September 2024 he pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and other charges from the courtroom assault. On December 10, 2024, Judge Susan Johnson sentenced him to 26 to 65 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Holthus did not speak at that hearing; a statement read for her said he had made a conscious effort to kill her. He will not be eligible for parole until after 2050.
The footage revived debate about courtroom security, especially when defendants who are not in custody stand unrestrained until sentence is imposed. It also circulated as supposed AI video; court records and contemporaneous news coverage confirm it is authentic. The episode remains a stark example of how quickly a formal proceeding can become a physical attack on a judge—and of how the justice system answered that attack with a decades-long sentence.
