Judge LaShann Hall Coddles Man Accused Of Killing Jam Master Jay

Brooklyn Federal Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall may have crossed professional lines when she offered heartfelt sympathy to Karl Jordan Jr, the man whose murder conviction she overturned despite multiple eyewitnesses identifying him as the man who killed Jam Master Jay.

Hall told Jordan she was “genuinely saddened” to hear about his stabbing at Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. The judge’s warm words came during a hearing where she ordered Jordan to remain locked up on separate drug charges.

“I was genuinely saddened to hear of the assault that happened to you. That should have never happened. It looks like you are on the mend,” Hall said to the man whose murder charges she overturned just weeks earlier, according to The New York Post.

Jordan was hospitalized after getting stabbed 22 times during a February 2025 brawl at MDC.

The facility houses high-profile inmates such as 6ix9ine, Nicolas Maduro, Sam Bankman-Fried and Luigi Mangione. The jail has earned a reputation as a dangerous hell-hole that even legal advocates call notorious.

Judge Hall’s loving compassion came just a month after she overturned Jordan’s February 2024 conviction, ruling prosecutors failed to prove his motive for killing Jam Master Jay in his Queens recording studio on October 30, 2002.

Two eyewitnesses testified they watched Jordan fire the fatal shots. Uriel “Tony” Rincon, who was wounded in the leg during the attack, told jurors he saw Jordan pull the trigger. Lydia High testified she watched a man with a neck tattoo give Jam Master Jay a pound before gunfire erupted. Jordan has a neck tattoo.

High also testified that Ronald Washington, Jordan’s co-defendant, ordered her to the ground at gunpoint when she tried to escape. Washington’s conviction stands because Hall found sufficient evidence of his motive.

The judge’s ruling dismissed the eyewitness accounts by focusing solely on motive. She wrote that prosecutors failed to prove

Jordan felt cheated by a failed Baltimore drug deal or wanted to steal cocaine from his godfather, even though he is sitting in MDC on separate cocaine distribution charges.

“The court is not convinced,” Hall wrote about the government’s theories. “There is simply no evidence suggesting that Jordan felt cheated by the failure of the Baltimore deal.”

But eyewitnesses saw what they saw.

Rincon and High both gave emotional testimony about watching Jordan shoot Jay twice in the head during what appeared to be a friendly embrace. The prosecution argued Jordan and Washington entered the studio around 7:30 P.M. with help from Jay Bryant, who faces trial in May.

Washington allegedly stood guard while Jordan approached Jam Master Jay for the deadly hug.

Jordan maintains his innocence and claims Bryant was the actual shooter. His lawyers plan to file a bail application next week seeking his release on the drug charges.

The case devastated Hip-Hop when Jam Master Jay was gunned down at age 37 in October 2002. Run-DMC had pioneered rap music in the 1980s before Mizell allegedly turned to cocaine dealing as the group’s popularity faded.

Jordan was 18 when prosecutors say he killed his godfather over the botched Baltimore drug deal. He faced a minimum 20-year sentence before Hall’s controversial ruling.

Hall’s sympathetic comments on Wednesday highlight the unusual relationship between judge and defendant.

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