Posted on 10/15/2006 2:31:47 PM PDT by Graybeard58
NEW YORK -- She's already a grandmother of 14, a cancer survivor and a former civil rights lawyer who took on radical clients others considered toxic.
Lynne Stewart will soon find out if she will be forced to assume another role -- prison inmate.
"I couldn't tell you I'm not stressed," Stewart said about her Monday sentencing in a Manhattan terrorism case. "I'm very concerned."
Prosecutors have asked a federal judge to impose a 30-year term for what they described in court papers as Stewart's "extremely dangerous and devious" conduct to help an Egyptian terrorist leader communicate with followers.
Stewart, 67, recently responded by writing the judge a nine-page letter seeking leniency.
Mixed with her trademark defiance -- "I am not a traitor" -- was a measure of contrition. After some soul searching, she wrote, she had concluded that a careless over-devotion to her clients -- "I am softhearted to the point of self-abnegation" -- was her undoing.
The letter was an attempt to "look back at this disaster in my life and speak to the judge from my brain and my heart," she told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview. "I think mercy is a great quality, but it's very hard to ask for it for myself."
She admits the plea may be too little, too late.
"I don't know whether it's the lawyer or the Irish in me that says, 'Prepare for the worst,"' she said. "I'm prepared to be led out of that courtroom in handcuffs."
Stewart was convicted in February 2005 of providing material support to terrorists by releasing a statement of Sheik Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, who was imprisoned for life after being convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.
Prosecutors said she blatantly broke rules designed to keep the blind cleric from communicating with the outside world and inciting violence, especially among his followers in Egypt.
It was hardly unusual for Stewart to question authority and defend unpopular figures in her three-decade legal career. With an aggressive yet self-effacing courtroom style, she represented Black Panthers, Weather Underground leaders, a former mob hit man and a man accused of trying to kill nine police officers.
As with other clients, she grew close to Abdel-Rahman and watched as he deteriorated mentally and physically through years of solitary confinement -- to the point, she says, that she felt compelled to help him speak out.
She believes the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than anything, made her behavior intolerable in the eyes of the government and gave it an excuse to make an example out of her.
"I did what I did for the client because he was a human being," she said. "Did my heart run away with me? It always does ... I let myself slide too much."
Testifying in her own defense, Stewart insisted she never condoned the sheik's terrorist agenda.
But she also called herself "a revolutionary with a small 'r,"' saying she believed violence against institutions was sometimes necessary to fight oppression.
She still believes it.
"My politics hasn't changed," she said. But she regrets not striking a gentler tone on the witness stand.
"I probably should have spent more time talking about what kind of lawyer I am, so the jury would understand," she said.
After her conviction, the attorney-turned-criminal defendant became a medical patient when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Surgery and radiation treatments have restored her health enough to face sentencing.
Stewart has drawn comfort from her family, including her six adult children and 14 grandchildren, and enjoyed the backing of other defense lawyers and strangers who see her case as a symptom of intolerant times. There have been hundreds of letters of support and a series of rallies, the latest planned on Sunday.
Her supporters see her case as "another affront to the constitution," she said. "They want to live in a free society."
Being a martyr behind bars has no appeal, she said. But even if she somehow escapes a harsh sentence, losing her identity has been ample punishment.
"To have lost my career. To be looked at askance. This loss of my personhood is immeasurable to me," she wrote in her letter. "It is the worst sentence and it is immutable."
F her!
I hope she rots in a cell until she expires there.
Good Riddens. And what is this crap about too ill to face sentencing... Give me a break, convicted in 2005, and now she is finally going to be sentenced. Oh yeah she was a lawyer.... Go Figure....
She's been free for far too long. Lock her up and put her in solitary confinement at Gitmo.
Hitler was a human being. the evil pedophile muhammed (may he burn in hell forever between Farmer Johns hams) was a human being. Atta and the rest of the 19 hijackers were human beings.
If being a human being demands support, the bar is so low as to be onexeistant.
I hope she gets in jail exactly what she deserves. When women go bad, they go REALLY bad, so a good time should be had by all.
At 67 and after a life of practicing law, Lynn Stewart should have known better. I believe she did know better, but, being an America-hater and a traitor, she went ahead with her agenda. Now it is time for America to tell her that she is not better than all of us, and not above the laws that protect America. Period!
30 yrs seems about right to me.
Let the traitor spend her remaining days filing
briefs in the big house for her Muzzie pals.
Stupid media. Trying to make her sound like a sweet ol' granny, when what she did was help the very people who want to destroy this country. Don't these idiots in the babbling professions realize that if the terrorists actually won, they'd be among the first to be separated from their heads?
Lynne Stewart is the radical attorney who has been indicted by Attorney General John Ashcroft for enabling her client, the terrorist Sheik, Omar Abdul Rahman, to carry out his murderous agendas while in prison by helping him to communicate with his terrorist organization in Egypt. Rahman was the spiritual leader of a cell that carried out the first World Trade Center bombing and was planning to blow up the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.
Stewart was recruited to the Rahman case by Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, who has a long history of anti-American causes dating back to the Vietnam War.
Ramsey Clark is the founder of the International Action Committee (IAC), a pro-Saddam, pro-Milosevic organization that regards America as the world's leading and most threatening terrorist state.
In a previous article about the "peace" organization A.N.S.W.E.R (March 29, 2002), I noted IAC's interlinking directorate with the Workers World Party (WWP), a Stalinist organization which was created in 1959 as a splinter of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. In that year, WWP leader Sam Marcy and his comrades supported the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution which had sought unsuccessfully to break free from the Soviet empire. WWP cadres staff the IAC offices and share political platforms. For example, WWP leaders spoke at an IAC rally in 1995 condemning Republicans generally and The Contract with America, specifically. Among them was Gavrielle Gemma, who has been credited with recruiting Clark to the IAC.
Among its icons, like Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro, the Workers World Party has an unrestrained admiration for North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung. In November 1986, Deirdre Griswold, an IAC executive, declared that North Korea was a socialist success story because there was no poverty, famine, or homelessness in North Korea. Griswold alleged that Kim Il Sung's birthday was celebrated both in North and South Korea.
The Workers World Party is an anti-semitic, Stalinist organization, whose goal is a communist revolution which would overthrow the American "ruling class" and establish a "workers state."
The FBI considers the WWP a terrorist organization. On May 10, 2001, FBI Director Louis Freeh stated that "Anarchists and extremist socialist groups — many of which, such as the Workers World Party, have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States."
The mainstream media has somehow missed the fact that the most ubiquitous organizer of "anti-war" protests is directed by a terrorist support group. It would seem that a question on this front to Ramsey Clark at one of his regular
"soft-hearted", my butt. She knew exactly what she was doing--I hope they charge her with treason and she rots in jail.
"I hope she rots in a cell until she expires there."
_______________________________________________________
What's with you, Sonar, this lawyer woman is a human being not a parking meter.
The correct term is..."I hope she rots in a cell until she dies there".
Now, doesn't that sound better?
yes, yes, yours is more appropriate.
I should also state I prefer scum like her to reside in a cell exactly one inch shorter and thinner in length than her height.
I also think she should be given her one hour of time each day in the yard at the same time each day where the sun dips just below the wall surrounding her, so she never sees the sun again.
There, how's that?
"I am not a traitor"
What a piece of SH*T.
She believes the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, more than anything, made her behavior intolerable in the eyes of the government and gave it an excuse to make an example out of her.
Blame others for your behavior - typical liberal BULL
"I did what I did for the client because he was a human being,"
No, your client is an animal who would gladly slit your throat in order to get away.
Anyone else get the sense that this reporter wrote this to make this piece of SH*T look like a victim?
Yup.
We are at war. She should be happy to get life in prison, and avoid the hangman's noose.
THAT says it all. The Black Panthers.
I do not watch television, but was in a hotel room last night, and turned on cable to watch. There was some former member of the Black Panthers being lionized in some liberal forum.
The Black Panther were scummy, murdering terrorists. David Horowitz should know...he spent quite some time in their inner circle.
Actually, like most leftists -- she's soft headed and cold hearted.
Semper Fi
i agree 100%...f'ck her and all of her clients...let the bee-itch rot in jail...she is a traitor and should have been lined up against a wall given a cigarette ( in know it causes cancer) and the shot at dawn!!...then the US should hav emulated the chinese and illed the family for the bullet....she is nothing but a worthless piece of shi-ite!!!
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