Lynne Stewart: ‘The Support of the People is What Sustained Me’

by Jeff Mackler / November issue of Socialist Action Newspaper

On Oct. 16, Federal District Court Judge John Koeltl sentenced New York progressive attorney and human rights activist Lynne Stewart to 28 months in prison, a term that stood in sharp contrast to the 30 years demanded by the U.S. Probation Department and U.S. government prosecutors.

Stewart had been convicted in a post-9/11 frame-up trial, in February 2005, on charges of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism, defrauding the government, and violating Special Administrative Measures promulgated by the Bureau of Prisons. Stewart's co-defendants, Mohamed Yousry and Ahmad Sattar, were convicted on similar spurious conspiracy charges. They received sentences of 20 months and 24 years respectively.

Federal law allows for a 15 percent sentence reduction for "good behavior." In Stewart's case her sentence, should her appeal be rejected, would likely be reduced to less than two years. Approximately 18 months of the sentence would likely be served, at Koeltl's and Stewart's request, at Danbury Prison in Connecticut, and the remaining six months at a "half-way house," where she would be released daily to work at various forms of community service.

Stewart's conviction stemmed from her public issuance of a press release on behalf of her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric and a leading critic of the U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak dictatorship. Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 on conspiracy charges to blow up New York monuments.

Yousry, who served as Stewart's Arabic translator during that time, was convicted, along with Stewart, of aiding the "smuggling" of Abdel Rachman's press statement out of the prison. Sattar, her paralegal and the third frame-up victim, was convicted of "conspiring to kill people outside the United States."

Stewart's case became the centerpiece of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's "war on terrorism." Ashcroft devoted a chapter of his recent book, "Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice," to the case.

The U.S. Probation Department's 30-year sentence recommendation for Stewart, 67, the maximum allowed under present law, amounted to a life sentence. Yousry, 47, was slated for 20 years and Sattar, 47, for a life term.

Judge Koeltl's decision stunned virtually all observers of the case. The disparity between the Probation Department and government requests to impose the maximum possible sentences and the actual sentences was the largest on record since the January 2005 Supreme Court decision in the case of U.S. v. Booker. The latter allowed federal judges discretion in determining the length of a sentence. Absent the Booker decision, Stewart would have been imprisoned immediately, to begin serving a 30-year term.

Stewart and Yousry were granted bail pending their appeals. Sattar, who has already served four and a half years in prison, will remain incarcerated. Government prosecutors were visibly shaken upon hearing Koeltl's sentences. They vehemently argued that he reverse his decision, which allowed the "convicted terrorist conspirators" to remain free on bail pending their appeals.

The day-long proceeding saw Stewart's five lawyers—Elizabeth Fink, Joshua Dratel, Susan Jordan, Jill Shellow-Lavine, and Ellen Yarashefsky—present volumes of evidence to correct the lies and misrepresentations in the Probation Department report and to otherwise mitigate its recommendation. There was no doubt that Koeltl was listening, as he accepted defense requests to strike or correct one after another of the false statements in the report.

Indeed, it became increasingly clear early on that Koeltl had largely decided the matter in advance. He came prepared with a lengthy written opinion, replete with numerous citations, which he diligently read following each defendant's closing remarks. "In this case," said Koeltl, "there are numerous factors that argue in favor of a very substantial downward variance," that is, a major sentence reduction.

"There was no evidence that any victim was in fact harmed," Koeltl noted, a fact that had been made abundantly clear throughout the five-month trial. The judge also rejected as "dramatically unreasonable" the Probationary Department's placing Stewart in Category VI, the highest ranking with respect to a defendant's past criminal history.

"The defendant has no criminal history," said Koeltl, "and yet is placed in the highest criminal history category equal to that of repeat felony offenses for the most serious crimes of murder and drug trafficking." Koeltl changed the classification to Category I, essentially the category for a defendant with no prior criminal record.

Koeltl then proceeded to evaluate Stewart's "personal characteristics," that is, additional factors that are permissible under the law in regard to reducing the recommended sentence.

"By providing a criminal defense to the poor, the disadvantaged, and unpopular over three decades, it is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to her clients but to the nation," Koeltl stated.

Referring to the 1100 letters he had received from Stewart's former clients, retired judges, prosecutors, attorneys, academics, and friends and family members, Koeltl observed that the letters "attest that Ms. Stewart has performed that role [defense attorney] with enormous skill and dedication.

Koeltl also carefully evaluated Stewart's medical condition, taking into consideration that she was still under treatment from recent breast cancer surgery. He also acknowledged the validity of the meticulously prepared defense arguments that Stewart's health would be unnecessarily endangered by a long incarceration.

After an obligatory summary of the "serious crimes" that Stewart had been convicted of and after the obligatory citing of the various reactionary statutes that formally include the offenses that Stewart was convicted of, Koeltl concluded with what amounted to an astonishing statement: "But the seriousness of the offenses does not wipe out the three decades of service and the other characteristics of the defendant and the particular effects of the sentence on this defendant that the court has discussed."

There was no doubt in this observer's mind that Judge Koeltl had decided that Stewart and her co-defendants' convictions—as well as the horrendous sentences the government was seeking to impose—were more a product of the present "war on terror" witch-hunt hysteria promoted by the U.S. government to stifle dissent as well as to chill the defense bar than they were a result of a fair trial and a just verdict.

But such statements cannot be publicly uttered by judges in U.S. courts today without virtually assured recriminations. In the present climate there are few, if any, who have the courage for outright defiance. A zero term sentence for Stewart, who had been "convicted" on five counts of conspiracy, was too much to expect in these fearful times.

Koeltl, who granted bail in part on the stated basis that Stewart and Yousry had a reasonable chance of reversing their conviction on appeal, went to great technical lengths to insure that his sentences would not be reversed.

An angry U.S. attorney Michael J. Garcia, however, reported to the outraged corporate media the following day that government prosecutors were "considering their options"—that is, whether or not to appeal Koeltl's relatively short sentence. They have until Nov. 15 to do so.

Stewart and her supporters were obviously bolstered by Koeltl's unexpected decision. A rally of 800 supporters at Manhattan's Riverside Church the previous afternoon celebrated Stewart's achievements, honored her courage, and railed at her frame-up. But few believed that the next day would result in anything but a long sentence with only a slim possibility that bail would be granted pending appeal.

Stewart, prepared for the worst, appeared in court with a plastic bag containing her various medications and a change of clothes.

Some observers suggest that the government may seek to trade an agreement to refrain from appealing Koeltl's sentence in return for Stewart's agreement to forego her right to appeal. In these troubled times there is every reason to believe that a longer sentence could be in the offing.

Lynne Stewart, however, remains determined to pursue her fight to reverse her conviction and resume her legal practice, the loss of which she states has been her greatest punishment. She was disbarred immediately following her conviction.

The battle for Stewart's freedom will be a product of her continuing capacity to inspire confidence in millions that she is a victim of a system gone amok, a system that can only be challenged by the collective and massive action of all those who cherish fundamental democratic rights and civil liberties.

To contact the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee, call (212) 625-9696. Website: lynnestewart.org.