Osman Abbasi

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Osman Abbasi dismissed a felony weapons charge — and a separate charge that Snyder had tried to escape from jail the day after his arrest — against Freddy Snyder on February 5, 2026. Both charges stemmed from a December 20, 2025 incident in which Caltech astrophysicist Dr. Carl Grillmair called deputies to report Snyder trespassing on his Llano property; deputies arrested Snyder for the weapons violation after he had already left, carrying a loaded, unregistered rifle. Eleven days after Abbasi dismissed both charges, on February 16, 2026, Snyder allegedly shot and killed Grillmair, 67, on his own front porch. Snyder, 30, now faces murder charges, along with carjacking and first-degree residential burglary counts, and has pleaded not guilty.

No public reasoning from Abbasi himself has been reported, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has not explained its own position when asked. What is documented is the order itself: a felony charge tied to a man found armed on the specific property of the specific person he would go on to kill, plus a charge that he'd tried to escape custody entirely, were both dropped, and Snyder was released from custody shortly after.

This is not a case of a judge weighing a defendant's future dangerousness in the abstract. Snyder had already been found armed on Grillmair's own property, after Grillmair himself called deputies on him. A set of charges meant to keep an armed trespasser who'd also tried to flee custody off the street were dropped, and within two weeks the homeowner he had trespassed against was dead.