Tierney blasts bail law after Brentwood firebomb plot indictment

A Brentwood firebomb plot indictment has turned into the latest Suffolk County fight over New York’s bail law, after prosecutors said four young men were accused of assembling Molotov cocktails near Pilgrim Psychiatric Center and planning to torch a vehicle in a neighborhood dispute.

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney identified the defendants as Elvis Osvaldo Romero Martinez, 20; Albert Yanes Moran, 20; Lorenzo Nohely Alvarado Navarette, 18; and Lester Merino Avila, 18. Prosecutors said the group gathered in the early morning hours of March 10 and used beer bottles and gasoline to make the incendiary devices. The district attorney’s office said the intended target was a vehicle belonging to someone with whom one of the defendants had a dispute.

Police said an earlier traffic stop on March 10 uncovered the pieces of that alleged plan before anyone was hurt. Suffolk County police said officers stopped a 2008 Honda Accord on Lexington Avenue near Caleb’s Path in Brentwood after seeing it being driven erratically around 2:28 a.m. Inside, investigators said they found two glass bottles filled with gasoline and gasoline-soaked rags, along with a gasoline can, a mask and a lighter.

The case returned to court before Acting Supreme Court Justice Richard Horowitz, who was bound by current state law. Because the charges in the indictment were not bail-eligible, Horowitz had no authority to hold the defendants on cash bail or remand them solely on the facts of the case. Martinez, Moran and Navarette were arraigned Tuesday, Merino Avila on Wednesday, and all four were released as the law required. They are due back in court on June 17.

Tierney has argued that the men’s ties outside the United States make them flight risks, and he used the case to renew his criticism of New York’s bail-reform framework. That law, enacted in 2019 and effective January 1, 2020, eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and many nonviolent felonies, then was amended in 2020 to expand the list of qualifying offenses. Under the statute, judges can order detention only when the charge fits one of those qualifying categories; in this case, prosecutors said it did not.

The Suffolk County PBA has also attacked the release of Molotov-cocktail defendants as proof that the system goes too far in protecting public safety. Albany’s debate is still alive, with new State Senate proposals pushing either to eliminate bail entirely or to restore broader judicial discretion. For Suffolk prosecutors and police, the Brentwood indictment is now another test case in a long-running dispute over whether the law should keep limiting judges, or give them more room to act when a firebomb plot lands in their court.