“I Led With My Heart Instead Of My Head”
The words of Lynne Stewart on how badly she handled her dealings with her client the "Blind Sheik", Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart was convicted of helping her client transmit messages from his prison cell despite a hard ban on communications which she agreed to uphold. Now Stewart is begging for mercy at her sentencing where she faces up to 30 years in prison.
Lynne F. Stewart, the firebrand lawyer known for defending unsavory criminals, now faces the possibility of living out her life like many of them, in maximum-security lockdown in a federal prison.
Today, 20 months after she was convicted on terror charges, Ms. Stewart and two co-defendants who were convicted of conspiring with her will be sentenced in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors, arguing that Ms. Stewart repeatedly flouted the law to aid the violent designs of an imprisoned terrorist client, have asked Judge John G. Koeltl to condemn her to 30 years in prison.
That would be a life sentence for Ms. Stewart, who turned 67 last week. Long an abrasive advocate of anti-government causes, these days she is not defiant. She is mournful about what she said were her failures as a lawyer.
Her dread of prison deepened unexpectedly, Ms. Stewart said, during the long period after a jury found her guilty on Feb. 10, 2005, of providing material aid to terrorism. She has recently recovered from breast cancer, but fears it will return in prison.
And if the judge comes down hard, she could be held in solitary confinement with limited visits, the same conditions as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the terrorist she was convicted of aiding.
All three defendants have had to wait for sentencing while Ms. Stewart was treated for cancer. She has finished radiation treatments, she said, and her doctors have declared that she is cancer-free. But she worries about the medical care in prison.
“I feel very threatened by it,” Ms. Stewart said. “I know too much about the way they deal with you in prison.”
Ms. Stewart’s sentencing will culminate a case the Bush administration cites as a major counter-terrorism achievement. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who brought the indictment, devoted a full chapter to the case in his new memoir.
Ms. Stewart still denies that she acted to further any violent goals of the sheik, a blind Islamic cleric from Egypt who is serving a life sentence for a thwarted 1993 plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Whatever the sentence, her lawyers have said they will appeal the case.
She actually agrees with the prosecutors in the case that she did a very bad job of some her duties as a lawyer and an officer of the court.
These days, Ms. Stewart says, what stings is that she agrees with some of prosecutors’ claims about her faulty legal work.
In her trial testimony, she said she believed that she could stretch the prison rules because she regarded them as unconstitutional. But the argument was weak because, as prosecutors noted, she never made a formal legal challenge.
She said that she completely misjudged how prosecutors viewed the sheik and the leeway she could take in defending him, as terrorism became an increasing threat to the United States. “To me, the sheik was part of the demonized other,” she said, “part of a continuum” with other violent radicals she had defended more successfully, including members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers.
She admits that she became too close to the sheik, insisting it was because of his deteriorating health and sanity after years in solitary confinement, not any affinity with his Islamic fundamentalism.
“I ignored any warning signs,” Ms. Stewart said. “I led with my heart instead of my head and thought it would be all right.”
In that one statement, she sums up a fundamental problem with the left in general. It is about feelings, not logic when it comes to many issues. Many people have pointed that fact out over the years, but this is one of the few times I have seen someone on the left actually acknowledge it. Regardless of what led to her decisions and actions, she needs to be held accountable for them. The article (you should read it) actually makes a much better argument why translator Mohamed Yousry should be shown some mercy in his sentence. But this article offers Ms. Stewart's feelings as mitigation, little else of import. One hopes the sentencing judge leads with his head and not his heart.
UPDATE: 28 months in prison is all the judge would give her. That's pretty sad.
Other Links to this Post
-
Stop The ACLU — October 16, 2006 @ 9:25 am
-
A Blog For All — October 16, 2006 @ 10:17 am
-
Exile in Portales — October 16, 2006 @ 11:40 am
-
Blue Star Chronicles — October 16, 2006 @ 2:22 pm
-
Joust The Facts — October 17, 2006 @ 4:45 am
By Buck, October 16, 2006 @ 10:13 am
I have mixed emotions about Stewart’s case. On the one hand, I believe she should receive the maximum sentence; her crime is inexcusable and her sentence should be an example to others who might consider the same course of action. Deterrent, and all that.
On the other hand, she IS a 67 year-old woman who is recovering from breast cancer. Her fears of her cancer resurfacing in prison are well-founded. She has also acknowledged she was guilty, and above all, WRONG in her actions. This is a case where mercy should be shown.
I hope the judge gives her 90 days in prison and 20 years probation, backed up with 1,000 hours of “community service.”
By Gaius, October 16, 2006 @ 10:23 am
There’s one small problem, Buck. She has been appearing at anti-war events bragging that she would have done exactly the same thing, apparently. The plea for mercy is the first time she has tried to make any of these statements of contrition. She’s playing the system, I think.
By AlwaysWatching, October 16, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
I have always said that cops, lawyers, judges, and politicians should always be given the maximum sentence when they break the law, that should be a law. I cannot believe they held off sentencing for having breast cancer, what those that have do do with anything. People in prison get cancer all the time. You don’t let them out, or if it was me, I would still be sent to prison. 28 months for what really counts for treason.