TermNearly Five Times Her Original
Sentence
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/16-5
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/16/civil_rights_attorney_lynne_stewart_re
July 16, 2010
The civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart's sentence was increased
Thursday after an appeals court ruled that two years and four months
of prison time was too light. Stewart was found guilty in 2005 of
distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client Sheikh
Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the "Blind Sheikh." We play excerpts
of Lynne Stewart's last broadcast interview before she was jailed in
November and speak to independent journalist Petra Bartosiewicz.
AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been ordered to
prison to begin serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence after a
federal appeals court upheld her conviction on Tuesday.
Lynne Stewart was found guilty in 2005 of distributing press releases
on behalf of her jailed client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known
as the "Blind Sheikh," who's serving a life sentence on
terror-related charges. Prosecutors had sought a thirty-year
sentence, but Stewart was sentenced to two-and-a-half years after the
judge rejected the prosecutors' argument that she threatened national
security and ruled there was no evidence her actions caused any harm.
On Tuesday, a three-judge appeals court panel ordered the trial judge
to revoke Stewart's bond and said she must begin serving her
twenty-eight-month sentence. The panel rejected Stewart's claim she
was acting only as a "zealous advocate" for her imprisoned client
when she passed messages for him. The appellate ruling said, quote,
"a genuinely held intent to represent a client 'zealously' is not
necessarily inconsistent with criminal intent."
The panel also described Stewart's twenty-eight-month sentence as,
quote, "strikingly low" and sent the case back to the trial judge to
determine whether she deserved a longer prison term. The ruling said
Stewart, who's seventy years old, was to surrender to US marshals
immediately, but her lawyers won her an extension until at least 5:00
p.m. today.
Well, Lynne Stewart has come to our studios here in New York. And we
welcome you, Lynne, to Democracy Now! Can you describe your reaction
to the ruling?
LYNNE STEWART: Well, in its sweeping and negative tone, I must say I
was first a little bit shocked, because we had expected, or had
hoped, at least, that some of these important constitutional issues
would be decided, and then very disappointed, on my own behalf,
certainly-personally, you can't discount-but actually, for all of us,
Amy, because these important constitutional issues-the right to speak
to your lawyer privately without the government listening in, the
right to be safe from having a search conducted of your lawyer's
office-all these things are now swept under the rug and available to
the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you, for people who haven't followed your case,
explain exactly what happened, why you were charged?
LYNNE STEWART: I represented Sheikh Omar at trial-that was in
1995-along with Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabara. I was lead trial
counsel. He was convicted in September of '95, sentenced to a life
prison plus a hundred years, or some sort-one of the usual outlandish
sentences. We continued, all three of us, to visit him while he was
in jail-he was a political client; that means that he is targeted by
the government-and because it is so important to prisoners to be able
to have access to their lawyers.
Sometime in 1998, I think maybe it was, they imposed severe
restrictions on him. That is, his ability to communicate with the
outside world, to have interviews, to be able to even call his
family, was limited by something called special administrative
measures. The lawyers were asked to sign on for these special
administrative measures and warned that if these measures were not
adhered to, they could indeed lose contact with their client-in other
words, be removed from his case.
In 2000, I visited the sheikh, and he asked me to make a press
release. This press release had to do with the current status of an
organization that at that point was basically defunct, the Gama'a
al-Islamiyya. And I agreed to do that. In May of-maybe it was later
than that. Sometime in 2000, I made the press release.
Interestingly enough, we found out later that the Clinton
administration, under Janet Reno, had the option to prosecute me, and
they declined to do so, based on the notion that without lawyers like
me or the late Bill Kunstler or many that I could name, the cause of
justice is not well served. They need the gadflies.
So, at any rate, they made me sign onto the agreement again not to do
this. They did not stop me from representing him. I continued to represent him.
And it was only after 9/11, in April of 2002, that John Ashcroft came
to New York, announced the indictment of me, my paralegal and the
interpreter for the case, on grounds of materially aiding a terrorist
organization. One of the footnotes to the case, of course, is that
Ashcroft also appeared on nationwide television with Letterman that
night ballyhooing the great work of Bush's Justice Department in
indicting and making the world safe from terrorism.
The course of the case followed. We tried the case in 2005 to a jury,
of course sitting not ten blocks from the World Trade Center, and an
anonymous jury, I might add, which I think went a long way to
contribute to our convictions. And all three of us were convicted.
Since that time, the appeals process has followed. The appeal was
argued almost two years ago, and the opinion just came like
a-actually like a thunderclap yesterday. And to just put it in
perspective, I think, it comes hard on the heels of Holder's
announcement that they are bringing the men from Guantanamo to New
York to be tried. That-I'll expand on that, if you wish, but that
basically is where we're at. It's said that I should be immediately
remanded, my bail revoked.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Lynne Stewart. She could be going to
prison at any point. Lynne, I wanted to read to you from the Times,
their description, saying, "In addressing whether [Ms.] Stewart's
sentence was too lenient, Judge Sack wrote that Judge Koeltl had
cited her 'extraordinary' personal characteristics, and had described
her as 'a dedicated public servant who had, throughout her career,
"represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular."'
"But Judge Koeltl had declined to determine whether Ms. Stewart had
lied at trial, a factor he should have considered in weighing her
sentence, Judge Sack wrote. 'We think that whether Stewart lied under
oath at her trial is directly relevant to whether her sentence was
appropriate.'"
What they talking about? What is their accusation about you lying at trial?
LYNNE STEWART: Well, of course, I'm not rendering a legal opinion
here, Amy, because I'm officially disbarred. But I will say that my
understanding of the law is that the judge may consider whether or
not a client or a person who testified in their own defense lied or
even shaded the truth to their own benefit. And my sense of
reading-and I haven't read them over recently, but my sense of the
sentencing was that the judge did consider it, at least in a manner.
He basically said he did not think it was relevant, and the court of
appeals argued with this.
I, of course, committed no perjury. I spoke on my own behalf. I
described what I did. I'm not sure that the court of appeals may have
liked what I said, but that is, you know, because the US attorney
went into my politics at great length, as if to say, "See, she has
radical politics, so we know she would have done something radical."
I've always said my politics are very, very different from the
sheikh's politics, and that was an unfair cut. But notwithstanding
that, they do have the right to consider it. It can be something, if
the judge believed you lied, that can increase your sentence.
I have every reason to believe that Judge Koeltl, who is a most
careful judge, a most-a judge described, in the opinion by Judge
Calabresi, as being someone who makes very wise decisions, considered
it-considered it, rejected it, and went ahead. This was the
number-the sentence he arrived at, twenty-eight months, and we hope
that he will retain the courage that he had in making that sentence,
to stick with it now that the government, through the Second Circuit,
has challenged it.
AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart, as you were being sentenced in 2006, you
had breast cancer. How are you today? How's your health?
LYNNE STEWART: The breast cancer is good; I have no recurrence. I
just had a mammogram, even though I'm seventy. I don't know how that
falls into the new warnings. But at any rate, I'm cancer-free. I have
some other aging problems, woman plumbing stuff, which I actually am
scheduled for surgery on December 7th. My lawyers are hoping to be
able to go to the Second Circuit and ask them to extend the period of
time that I would have to surrender, in order that this surgery may
be accomplished right here in New York at Lenox Hill Hospital. We're
not sure of that. It does seem that they're-
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how this happens today, because at this
point you have an extension until 5:00 p.m. today-
LYNNE STEWART: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: -before going to prison? What will happen today?
LYNNE STEWART: Well, the judge has asked the lawyers to research
whether he has the power at this point-I mean, this is like ancient
English Magna Carta law. You know, the case has been appealed. It's
in the Second Circuit. In order for him to order me to prison, it has
to be before him. In other words, the papers, I guess, have to be
carried from the upper floor to the lower floor to the district
court. He wanted them to research whether or not he can do anything
before he has that mandate. He, of course, can decide that I'm
turning myself in tomorrow. He can also decide that he doesn't have
it until-usually the mandate takes a week to ten days to come down.
So we're sort of on the edge. It will not preclude my lawyers from
going to the circuit directly and asking them to stay their order of
my immediate remand and revocation of bail. So we're sort of on the
edge. We're-
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know where you will be imprisoned?
LYNNE STEWART: Say that again?
AMY GOODMAN: Do you know where you will be imprisoned?
LYNNE STEWART: No. See, that's one of the other reasons. It's not
only my surgery. It also is the fact that I've never been designated
and also the fact that the pre-sentence report on which they usually
base these designations is three years old at this point. It doesn't
take into account anything that has happened since then.
So we think there are some grounds for extending the time, but I
think it's fair to say that at this point I have brought my books and
my medicines with me to go to court this afternoon, and I expect-I
expect the worst, being Irish, but hope for the best, because I'm a
leftist and always optimistic.
AMY GOODMAN: What books have you brought with you?
LYNNE STEWART: I have Snow by-I never pronounce his name right-Orhan
Pamuk. I have The Field of Poppies; I can't remember the author,
terrible, given to me by a dear comrade, Ralph Schoenman. And I have
a couple of mysteries, because I'm an addict of mysteries, and it
passes the time quickly for me.
AMY GOODMAN: Lynne, would you do anything differently today, or would
you do anything differently back then, if you knew what you knew today?
LYNNE STEWART: I think I should have been a little more savvy that
the government would come after me. But do anything differently? I
don't-I'd like to think I would not do anything differently, Amy. I
made these decisions based on my understanding of what the client
needed, what a lawyer was expected to do. They say that you can't
distinguish zeal from criminal intent sometimes. I had no criminal
intent whatsoever. This was a considered decision based on the need
of the client. And although some people have said press releases
aren't client needs, I think keeping a person alive when they are in
prison, held under the conditions which we now know to be torture,
totally incognito-not incognito, but totally held without any contact
with the outside world except a phone call once a month to his family
and to his lawyers, I think it was necessary. I would do it again. I
might handle it a little differently, but I would do it again.
AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart, I want to thank you for being with us. I
hope we can talk to you in prison. Lynne Stewart has been sentenced
to two-and-a-half years in jail, to be served beginning today, unless
a judge is able to intervene. Thanks so much for being with us.
.
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