Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Slap on the Wrist for Traitorous Terrorist Enabler
Lynn Stewart, who, I'm sorry to say, was a lawyer, the lead defense counsel for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in 1995, and who was convicted last year of helping the 'blind sheik' (mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center) continue to communicate from federal prison with his savage Egyptian terrorist organization, the Islamic Group (Gama'at al Islamia) was sentenced yesterday to 28 months (which is 2 and 1/3 years). She had faced 30 years and should have gotten most of them as her punishment.
Under the guise of attorney client communications with Stewart, blind Sheik Omar would actually give terror instructions in Arabic to the interpreter, who passed them on to the terrorist group in Egypt. The interpreter got 24 years, a little more like it.
Andrew McCarthy, who was the lead prosecutor of Omar Abdel Rahman, writes at NRO and shoots down, seemingly without effort, the 'no harm--no foul' apologies for Stewart which may well have caused the judge to deviate from the recommended sentence.
Money quote:
"[M]ore than 400 letters [Stewart] submitted to Judge Koeltl about her sentence include many from law professors and criminal defense lawyers who said that her actions never caused actual harm and warned of a chilling effect on lawyers who defend terrorists if she receives a long sentence."
These points are meritless. Our national counterterrorism strategy now is to prevent terror attacks from happening, not to prosecute them after people have been killed. Under the circumstances, it is no defense for those who knowingly assist organizations that practice indiscriminate murder to claim that no one ended up getting hurt--the whole point of the strategy is to disable the accomplices so no one does get hurt.
Moreover, as I tried to point out (in obvious futility) to Ms. Preston [writer for the NYT], Stewart's conviction does not pertain to what she did while she was actually defending the blind sheikh. The government has always been extremely deferential to the needs of attorneys representing accused terrorists as they prepare for trial, conduct trial, prepare for sentencing, and draft any appeals. The acts on which Stewart's convictions were based took place long after Abdel Rahman's trial and sentencing, long after his appeals were rejected, and well beyond the time allotted for filing habeas corpus petitions to attack his convictions. When she was indicted, Stewart was not performing the function of a lawyer defending a terrorist; her prosecution thus portends no interference with lawyers engaged in the zealous representation of criminal defendants.
Diomedes likes McCarthy as much as he likes Mark Steyn. McCarthy is good.
UPDATE: McCarthy wrote a piece after the sentencing here. It's good. Money quote:
And speaking of tactics, it is noteworthy that Lynne executed the standard defense sentencing playbook masterfully — and with great success. She affected contrition for what she portrayed as mistakes of judgment (not real crimes, of course), and pleaded with the sentencing judge to be lenient because she had already suffered enough with the loss of her precious law license. “The end of my career truly is like a sword in my side,” the New York Times reports her as plying the court’s heartstrings. ”Permit me to live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously.”
So what happened once she got the much sought after slap-on-the-wrist? Why, she marched right outside the courthouse and defiantly proclaimed: “This is a great victory against an overreaching government. I hope the government realizes their error, because I am back out ... [a]nd I am staying out until after an appeal that I hope will vindicate me, that I hope will make me back into the lawyer that I was.”
Translation: Despite my conviction, I won and the government lost. And once the appeals court fixes things, my conviction will be gone and I’ll be right back in business.
And what about the cancer, which sentencing judge John Koeltl also relied on to rationalize his ill-conceived beneficence? The Times relates that the “feisty” Stewart — sounding a lot more like a professional crook than a professional lawyer — brayed that if it eventually comes down to serving the 28 months, “I could do it standing on my head.” Apparently, she’s feeling better.
The rest of us should be feeling worse. We’ve tried responding to terrorism by standing on our heads and sitting on our hands. It didn’t work out too well, and Act II promises only more of the same.
Under the guise of attorney client communications with Stewart, blind Sheik Omar would actually give terror instructions in Arabic to the interpreter, who passed them on to the terrorist group in Egypt. The interpreter got 24 years, a little more like it.
Andrew McCarthy, who was the lead prosecutor of Omar Abdel Rahman, writes at NRO and shoots down, seemingly without effort, the 'no harm--no foul' apologies for Stewart which may well have caused the judge to deviate from the recommended sentence.
Money quote:
"[M]ore than 400 letters [Stewart] submitted to Judge Koeltl about her sentence include many from law professors and criminal defense lawyers who said that her actions never caused actual harm and warned of a chilling effect on lawyers who defend terrorists if she receives a long sentence."
These points are meritless. Our national counterterrorism strategy now is to prevent terror attacks from happening, not to prosecute them after people have been killed. Under the circumstances, it is no defense for those who knowingly assist organizations that practice indiscriminate murder to claim that no one ended up getting hurt--the whole point of the strategy is to disable the accomplices so no one does get hurt.
Moreover, as I tried to point out (in obvious futility) to Ms. Preston [writer for the NYT], Stewart's conviction does not pertain to what she did while she was actually defending the blind sheikh. The government has always been extremely deferential to the needs of attorneys representing accused terrorists as they prepare for trial, conduct trial, prepare for sentencing, and draft any appeals. The acts on which Stewart's convictions were based took place long after Abdel Rahman's trial and sentencing, long after his appeals were rejected, and well beyond the time allotted for filing habeas corpus petitions to attack his convictions. When she was indicted, Stewart was not performing the function of a lawyer defending a terrorist; her prosecution thus portends no interference with lawyers engaged in the zealous representation of criminal defendants.
Diomedes likes McCarthy as much as he likes Mark Steyn. McCarthy is good.
UPDATE: McCarthy wrote a piece after the sentencing here. It's good. Money quote:
And speaking of tactics, it is noteworthy that Lynne executed the standard defense sentencing playbook masterfully — and with great success. She affected contrition for what she portrayed as mistakes of judgment (not real crimes, of course), and pleaded with the sentencing judge to be lenient because she had already suffered enough with the loss of her precious law license. “The end of my career truly is like a sword in my side,” the New York Times reports her as plying the court’s heartstrings. ”Permit me to live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously.”
So what happened once she got the much sought after slap-on-the-wrist? Why, she marched right outside the courthouse and defiantly proclaimed: “This is a great victory against an overreaching government. I hope the government realizes their error, because I am back out ... [a]nd I am staying out until after an appeal that I hope will vindicate me, that I hope will make me back into the lawyer that I was.”
Translation: Despite my conviction, I won and the government lost. And once the appeals court fixes things, my conviction will be gone and I’ll be right back in business.
And what about the cancer, which sentencing judge John Koeltl also relied on to rationalize his ill-conceived beneficence? The Times relates that the “feisty” Stewart — sounding a lot more like a professional crook than a professional lawyer — brayed that if it eventually comes down to serving the 28 months, “I could do it standing on my head.” Apparently, she’s feeling better.
The rest of us should be feeling worse. We’ve tried responding to terrorism by standing on our heads and sitting on our hands. It didn’t work out too well, and Act II promises only more of the same.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 8:22 AM 
