Clark County Judge Attack

About

Clark County Judge Attack, also known as Man Jumps on Nevada Judge, refers to a viral video of Nevada defendant Deobra Redden leaping over a podium to attack Clark County Judge Mary Kay Holthus after she denied him probation. The moment was widely joked about on social media and subject to memes, remixes and other parodies as it spread online in early January 2024.

Origin

On January 3rd, 2024, Twitter / X user @PicturesFoIder^[1] posted a video they described as a man attacking a Clark County judge after she denied him probation. The video rapidly went viral, gaining over 57,000 retweets, 450,000 likes and 17,000 quote tweets in one day (shown below).

Future reporting^[2] identified the man as Deobra Delone Redden and the judge as Mary Kay Holthus. Redden was being tried for an arrest last year on allegations that he attacked a person with a baseball bat. He faces multiple new felony charges, including battery on a protected person.

Spread

As the video spread on social media, users posted jokes about the height and speed of Redden's attack and jump. On January 3rd, 2024, Twitter user @MaxGotJokes^[3] wrote that Redden "jumped like when a muppet gets thrown," gaining over 80 retweets and 1,500 likes in one day (shown below, left). That same day, user @godhateskyle^[4] was one of several users to compare the leap to the Foxy jumpscare from Five Nights at Freddy's, gaining over 75 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Also on January 3rd, Twitter user @TheWappleHouse tweeted an edit of the video, setting it to the song "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd and gaining over 80 retweets and 850 likes in less than a day (shown below, top). On January 4th, user @dalaimo13 posted an edit setting the footage to "Bodies" by Drowning Pool, gaining 15 likes in less than an hour (shown below, bottom).

Sentencing

On January 8th, 2024, Redden appeared in court in order to complete his sentencing, again in front of Judge Holthus. He received a sentence of 19 to 48 months in prison. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal,^[5] Judge Holthus clarified that this sentence was not altered due to Redden's actions, stating, "I want to make it clear that I am not changing or modifying the sentence I was in the process of imposing last week before I was interrupted by the defendant’s actions."

On January 8th, a tweet by @CollinRugg on X^[6] (formerly Twitter) commented on the sentencing and shared that Redden would return to court on Tuesday to be sentenced for separate charges he faces after attacking the judge. The post (seen below) earned over 3,600 likes in seven hours.

During his sentencing, Redden was brought into the room wearing shackles and mitts, restraints meant to prevent another incident and ensure the safety of others in the courtroom. He also wore a "spit hood," which is meant to stop aggressive inmates from spitting on others. This hood and the other restraints led to jokes about him looking like Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs.

For example, X^[7] user @dom_lucre tweeted about Redden's unusual appearance on January 8th, 2024, receiving 37,000 likes and 3,600 comments in only seven hours (seen below, left). X^[8] user @ItsGunpoint replied with a picture of Hannibal Lecter, with the comment receiving over 2,000 likes in the same amount of time (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References