Stewart Sentencing Reaction

Quite a few folks are extremely unhappy with the slap on the wrist delivered by Judge John Koeltl to Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of providing material support to a foreign terrorist group. She aided her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with his overseas minions, and may have led to deaths overseas through such communications as they called for a renewal of the conflict between Rahman's followers and the Egyptian government.

For all this, she got all of 28 months. It's an injustice, and comes nowhere near as satisfactory for the criminal acts she engaged it. This was not a matter of zealous representation. She was aiding and abetting her client in violation of an agreement with the federal government not to provide communication between her client and others outside prison.

The New York Post opines:

Though she claimed she was only acting as a zealous defender, Stewart wasn't convicted of offering legal advice. A jury - after 13 long days of deliberations, following six months of testimony - found that she had smuggled into prison a message to Rahman from terrorist Rifa'l Ahman Tara. The message asked the sheik to support renewed Islamic violence in Egypt.

Then she smuggled back out a coded dispatch that led to the dissolution of a cease-fire between Abdel-Rahman's Islamic Group and the Egyptian government.

How many innocent people were "harmed" - that is, killed - as a result of that collaboration can only be guessed. Apparently, Egyptians don't count as "victims" in Judge Koeltl's eyes.

When she took on the sheik's case, Stewart agreed to and signed rules that barred her from passing any messages to and from her client. Yet she now claims she only "tested the limits" solely to "serve my client."

On the witness stand, however, Stewart made clear that when it came to Abdel-Rahman and his murderous thugs, she was not just a legal mouthpiece - she was a zealous supporter.

And the judge thwarted the jury's intent when they convicted her of the criminal acts prosecutors had laid out in a lengthy case. What makes this all the stranger is that one of her co-defendants got 24 years for substantially the same crime, whereas Stewart got off with the slap on the wrists.

The New York Sun notes:

The right to defense counsel is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment and was strengthened by the Supreme Court in Gideon v.Wainwright. But it is a right to counsel, not a right to a post-conviction accomplice.

Stewart could be a zealous representative of her clients, but her actions went well beyond acting as a defendant's representative to taking part in criminal acts that endangered national security.

Rahman laughed at the way Stewart and her assistants (Sattar and Yoursry) smuggled in the illegal communications).

As noted yesterday, federal prosecutors are looking to appeal the light sentence.

The NYT notes the following:

But Judge Koeltl said there had been “an irreducible core of extraordinarily severe criminal conduct” in her actions on behalf of the client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind fundamentalist Islamic cleric who is serving a life sentence for plotting to bomb New York City landmarks. Ms. Stewart was convicted on Feb. 10, 2005, of conspiring to provide material aid to terrorism by smuggling the sheik’s messages encouraging violence by his militant followers in Egypt.

While agreeing that Ms. Stewart had flouted the law and deceived the government by breaking prison rules to publicize the sheik’s messages, Judge Koeltl broadly rejected the prosecutors’ portrayal of her as a serial liar and terrorist conspirator who would be a danger to society if she remained free.

She engaged in criminal conduct that undermined national security by letting a convicted terrorist communicate with his followers, and that doesn't quite rise to the level of being a danger to society? Are you kidding me? Well, the Judge does go on to say that Stewart's actions could have led to potentially lethal consequences. If that's the case, why the slap on the wrist? Why avoid meting out a more severe penalty.

The fact is that someone who ostensibly abides by the law all of their life and suddenly engages in a severe crime shouldn't be given a slap on the wrist because of all the earlier good deeds. It is but one factor to take into account, but the severity of the crime, and the potential and actual consequences of her actions demanded a far heavier sentence.

We also learn the following about her co-defendants:

Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 46, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for negotiating by telephone with a follower of the sheik’s who was an associate of Osama bin Laden’s to try to bring an end to a cease-fire by Mr. Abdel Rahman’s group in Egypt. Mr. Sattar also wrote and released a statement he called a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for the killing of Jews. Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence.

The third co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry, 51, Ms. Stewart’s Arabic translator in her discussions with the sheik, was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison.

Of those sentences, Sattar's appears to be the most appropriate. Yousry's sentence also appears to be on the light side, though the question remains what sentencing guidelines were followed.

For all the discussion on the matter, I have not seen much in the way of discussion on what the sentencing guidelines were in this case. I noted yesterday certain provisions that would have suggested a minimum sentence of 5+ years per count for Stewart.