Freedom was dealt another blow in a Manhattan Federal courtroom today as Criminal Defense lawyer Lynn Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison for zealously defending her client, the blind terrorist sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. The Federal prosecutors are claiming that the jailing of the 67 year old lawyer who is still recovering from cancer treatments is a “major victory in the war on terror”. The government intended to send a message by prosecuting Stewart and they certainly got their point across: Lawyers who take on the representation of suspected terrorists may find themselves subject to prosecution and imprisonment.
It was incredibly sad to witness Stewart, a staunch defender of Unites States political prisoners and garden variety unpopular defendants, grovel to a federal judge as she sought a reduction in the life sentence she was subject to under federal law. Stewart argued that the government's characterization of her was wrong and took unfair advantage of the "hysteria that followed 9/11 and that was re-lived during the trial." I don’t see how anyone could disagree with the fact that her prosecution was politically motivated and that she was indeed swept up in the governments fascist post 911 rush to strip its citizens of their basic civil liberties.
The prosecutors must be disappointed at the judge’s failure to punish Stewart more severely but again, the message they sent was clearly received. Stewart was immediately disbarred after being convicted of a felony and has been scraping together funds to assist in her legal defense. What lawyer in her right mind would take on the representation of a suspected terrorist with the threat of federal prosecution and a long prison sentence hanging over her head?
It is unlikely that a case like Stewarts will ever occur again. Under the legislation passed last week by Congress a defendant like Abdel-Rahman is unlikely to ever be tried in a regular court-room, never mind actually having access to counsel.
Those of us in the legal profession should not treat the government’s attack on the rule of law and individual attorneys with anything than utter contempt, to echo the contempt with which the President and his “Justice” Department showed for Lynn Stewart, a tireless champion of freedom.
2 comments:
Well, she did break the law in a pretty serious way, and as a lawyer she should A. have known better and B. known that, even if she thought the law was wrong, as a lawyer she'd accepted her role as a part of our legal system and she wasn't entitled to take the law into her own hands.
I like your blog, I added a link to it on my blog.
Thanks JT, I have a link to your fine blog as well. I think I take a bit more of a radical position on whether lawyers should acquiesce to rules which so clearly interfere with the defendant’s right to freely communicate with counsel. Stewart has quite a reputation in the legal community here in New York as an aggressive criminal defense lawyer and the Feds have tussled with her before on a number of cases. She was well known and clearly closely watched by the government. I agree she was guilty of bending the rules as well as a certain amount of naiveté in the City’s heavily charged post 911 atmosphere, but the sentence the government sought was clearly disproportionate to the offense. I have read her lawyers motion to dismiss and agree that the statute she was charged under was constitutionally vague. The full scope of the legal arguments would take the rest of my working day to hash out, but for me the important point is that the government is taking anti-terrorist statutes and applying them to US Citizens, lawyers even, and that is a bad place for the government to go.
Post a Comment