Legal Activists of Color: NY1 News Poll - What do you think of Lynne Stewart's 28-month

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/Polls/Results/index.jsp

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Snap Poll Results What do you think of Lynne Stewart's 28-month sentence?

NY1 News has launched our "Snap Poll" feature, which allows Time Warner Digital Cable subscribers in New York City to use their remote control to answer poll questions that appear on their TV screen. If you don't have Time Warner Digital Cable - or you just prefer to use the web - cast your vote in today's poll here:

What do you think of Lynne Stewart's 28-month sentence?

Results since OCTOBER 16TH, 2006 Too lenient 50.0%

Appropriate 12.0%

Too harsh 37.0%

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/Polls/Results/index.jsp

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http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/17/celebrating_stewarts_sentence.php

Celebrating Stewart's Sentence

Today, defense lawyers and civil libertarians throughout the nation can rejoice in the news of the greatly reduced sentence imposed by Judge John Koeltl on New York defense attorney Lynne Stewart. Although the prosecution had asked for 30 years, Koeltl imposed a sentence of 28 months. Koeltl imposed the greatly reduced sentence, he said, because of Stewart's "extraordinary personal characteristics."

"The seriousness of the offense does not wipe out three decades of service," the judge noted.

Last week, Stewart sent the judge a letter in which she admitted to having violated prison regulations, but she added, "My only motive was to serve my client as his lawyer."

"The government's characterization of me and what occurred is inaccurate and untrue. It takes unfair advantage of the climate of urgency and hysteria that followed 9/11 and that was re-lived during the trial. I did not intentionally enter into any plot or conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization," wrote Stewart.

Stewart had asked to serve her sentence under house arrest because of her age (66), her battle with breast cancer, and her years of public service, attested to by hundreds of letters from friends and colleagues to the court.

The sentence reduction is important not just to Stewart but to all of us because it illustrates distinctions that the Justice Department seems incapable of making these days: the distinction between someone who violates a regulation (not a criminal offense) and someone who engages in terrorist acts or intentionally promotes such ends. The distinction, in the end, between bad judgment and criminal intent, or even between innocence and guilt.

These distinctions have been increasingly obscured since 9/11, to the detriment of the rule of law. They have often been glossed over by prosecutors who take advantage of legal definitions and loopholesand long weeks of inflammatory and barely relevant testimony often in joint trials of several persons who are not equally culpableall to exhaust and muddle juries into buying wholesale conclusions built not on solid collections of relevant facts but on mere piles of suppositions.

Koeltl was able to make important distinctions about Stewart. This is good for justice, good for the rule of law, good for us all.

Ed. Note: Jennifer Van Bergen is a lawyer and writer guest blogging for TomPaine.com today. She recently wrote about Stewart's case for TomPaine.com.

--Jennifer Van Bergen | Tuesday, October 17, 2006 8:16 AM

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