People’s Lawyer Sentenced to 10 years in Prison

July 24th, 2010 § 2 Comments

Not enough has been written about US civil rights attorney, Lynne Stewart, who was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for distributing press releases on behalf of her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. The majority of mainstream output seems to have been generated by right-wing commentators highlighting the fact that the 70–year-old chemotherapy patient will likely die in a prison cell. Often referred to as a people’s lawyer,’ many believe Stewart’s harsh sentence has more to do with a McCarthyesque crackdown on lawyers who represent those targeted by America’s ongoing ‘war on terror’ than upholding the law.

Columnist Michael Goodwin recently contributed the same article to Rupert Mudoch’s Fox News and the New York Post with different titles (“Justice for the Devil’s Advocate vs. “Let the Devil’s Advocate Rot”) after Stewart’s sentence became public. Goodwin praises the decision to increase Stewart’s initial sentence and says her case “should also serve as a warning to other lawyers with a nasty habit of romanticizing their terror clients.” His article is currently featured on the front page of Keep America Safe’s website, a neoconservative lobbying group founded by Dick Cheney’s daughter Elizabeth, and neocon political commentator, William Kristol.

Stewart dedicated her life to providing controversial and unpopular clients legal representation. She was often overworked, underpaid and sometimes not paid at all. She has made many enemies, perhaps none as powerful and influential as former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who laid the initial charges against her. Even while living a life full of struggle, Stewart extended her compassion to all human beings, including Abdel-Rahman (known as the “blind sheik”), whose extreme state of forced isolation compelled her to commit an act that she may pay with her life for.

Those who wish to discredit Stewart associate her with the charges laid against her clients while ignoring the fact that it is lawyers like her who keep the merits of the American legal system alive. Stewart’s case may indeed serve as a warning as Goodwin hopes. There is already a deficit of attorneys who are willing to represent those labeled as ‘terrorists’ for fear that they may also be targeted in the process. What is truly frightening, however, is the fact that the other warning that Stewart’s case provides about the degradation of the right to proper legal counsel in the US may be ignored until it is too late.

Democracy Now! has provided excellent coverage of Stewart’s case all the way back to when it began in 2002. You can watch the most recent segment on Stewart here. On July 16th Stewart’s words on the day of her sentencing were read by Amy Goodman:

Prison has diminished me. Daily, I face the prospect of death, losing pieces of my personality. My sense of inquiry and compassion have turned to weariness, my thoughts regimented, my world, once filled with love and laughter and family, slipping away from me.”

Guest Petra Bartosiewicz also explained what Stewart meant with an earlier statement about repeating her actions and why she committed the illegal act in the first place:

And then they talked about what she had said on Democracy Now!, about she would do it again. And she said that she meant the “it” she meant in “do it again” meaning compassionately representing my client, I would do it again. “He was old and blind, no longer could read Braille, couldn’t communicate with anyone. It was his deteriorating health and conditions that compelled me,” she said, “not his politics.” And she talked about the unreasonable restrictions, such as the SAMs, that she wished she had challenged right away.

And here are Stewart’s most recent words, written from prison. Considering her earlier state of expressed desolation, there should be little doubt that her show of strength is geared at those who have been pained by the outcome of her appeal. Once again Stewart is defending others, this time by acting brave and optimistic from within the closed walls of a prison cell, while she herself has been dealt with what many consider a great injustice.

In one of the best selling books of this season, the heroine, Lizabeth Salander, a hardwired, brilliant young computer genius is shot and buried by the antagonist. He is a prototype of the cruel, greedy, misogynistic, exploiter. She claws herself out of her premature grave and indomitable and focused, defeats him. Finally by the end of volume 3 she has triumphed, using her own brains and relying on her friends and comrades, over the entire corrupt corporate, governmental, military power structure that had been trying to oppress and suppress her her whole life.

Last Thursday, Federal Judge John Koeltl attempted to bury me alive. Acting for the Government and Judges of the 2 Circuit Court of Appeals he sentenced me at their demand to more than 5x the term he originally thought “right and just”. With his new sentence, of 10 years, I am buried in the Prison Industrial Complex until I am nearly 80 years old, if I make it. But, believe me, I, like Lisabeth Salander intend to lift the dirt off and even if weakened and wounded–regain my voice and strength!!

Even though she hasn’t asked for it, more needs to be done in defense of this great defender.