Lynne Stewart

[Annie]

She should have gotten 30 years, if not the death penalty. She was every bit as guilty of treason as the Rosenbergs:

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009105

Today's Featured Article

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Sheik's Apprentice
A lawyer who passed messages to terrorists gets off light.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

It was a case of radical chic and the radical sheik. Yesterday in New York, Lynne Stewart, a self-styled "civil rights" attorney whose past clients include the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for illegally passing messages between her imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, and his followers in Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the terrorist group responsible for killing 62 mostly European and Japanese tourists in Luxor in 1997. Some of those tourists were beheaded; others were disemboweled. The Sheik was also involved in planning terror attacks in New York, for which he is serving a life sentence.

In an age when courts routinely impose five-year prison terms for drug offenders, and life sentences on former CEOs, 28 months may not seem an appropriate sentence for a terrorist accomplice, especially when the government sought 30 years. Ms. Stewart certainly had the sympathy of the judge, John Koeltl, who praised her as a champion of "the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular." She herself seems to have had few misgivings about her actions: "The government's characterization of me and what occurred is inaccurate and untrue," she told the judge. "It takes unfair advantage of the climate of urgency and hysteria that followed 9/11."

In similar circumstances--albeit with a different defendant--a case could be made for leniency. Ms. Stewart is 67 and recovering from breast cancer. But remorse is also a prerequisite for mercy, and Ms. Stewart shows none, either for her crime or for the arc of a career which flows too naturally from championing the "liberation" movements of the 1960s to the Islamists of the present day. What her clients have in common is that they loathe America.

Now she basks in the pity and praise of her fellow radical travelers, who haven't seemed to spare much thought for the victims of Luxor. It says everything about her, and about them.

 

[jillian]

She should have gotten 30 years, if not the death penalty. She was every bit as guilty of treason as the Rosenbergs:

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009105

I think they had a better case against Lynne Stewart. She should have had to spend the rest of her life in jail.

 

[Annie]

I think they had a better case against Lynne Stewart. She should have had to spend the rest of her life in jail.

Yep, wish they could resentence...

 

[jillian]

Yep, wish they could resentence...

I don't know what Judge Koeltl was thinking...

I was talking to a Judge about the sentence today. He was ok with it only because he said the government often tries to go after attorneys who represent particularly bad folk... kind of when they kept after Bruce Cutler cause he kept beating them on John Gotti's cases. He also said the problem was the messages were written in Arabic, which she couldn't read. I think she knew what they were anyway. She's a beast.

 

[William Joyce]

She's a beast.

Yes, but I wish I knew more about the facts of the case. The radical in me is inclined to think they want to scare lawyers away from representing suspected terrorists. But I wouldn't mind if they just shot the suspects, so I guess I'm not really being consistent on this one.

 

[jillian]

Yes, but I wish I knew more about the facts of the case. The radical in me is inclined to think they want to scare lawyers away from representing suspected terrorists. But I wouldn't mind if they just shot the suspects, so I guess I'm not really being consistent on this one.

The facts of the case are that Lynne Stewart was prohibited from arranging for communication between Abdel-Rahman and the outside world. She took his messages, written in arabic and brought them to other terrorists.

But yes, there's an element of wanting to scare lawyers away from representing anyone the govt wants to get... not just terrorists. They did it to John Gotti, too.

And yeah,,,, a bit inconsistent. I'm not real big on punishing "suspects"... that whole innocent til proven guilty thing.