On July 15, prominent civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart will be re-sentenced. Supporters have urged action in advance of the court date. (See below for rally information and how to write letters to support Stewart.)
Stewart was ordered to prison after her bail was revoked in November 2009, even though her appeal was, and is, still under review. The new hearing comes after an ominous and unprecedented higher court ruling directing the original trial judge to re-sentence her to a much harsher sentence then the 28 months she is currently serving.
In 2005, Stewart was convicted of aiding terrorism by transmitting the contents of a press statement by her client, the blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in 2000. Ahmed Abdel Sattar, who is presently serving a 24-year term for assisting the cleric, and Mohamed Yousry, a translator who was sentenced originally to 20 months were also convicted at that time.
In November, the appellate court ordered the revocation of Stewart’s bond, and she surrendered to prison authorities on Nov. 19 to begin serving a 28-month sentence.
The judges from the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals then ordered the trial judge, John Koeltl of the Federal District Court, to hold another hearing to consider re-sentencing Stewart to a longer term on the grounds that she had lied at the trial.
The judge surprised and angered authorities in October 2006 when he sentenced Stewart to a term less than 10 percent as long as the 30 years called for the prosecution. At the time, Judge Koeltl, in part voicing a broad and widespread sympathy for Stewart called her “a dedicated public servant who had, throughout her career, represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular.”
This positive evaluation outraged federal prosecutors. The latest decision of the appellate judges virtually demands a longer sentence for Stewart. It presses Judge Koeltl to increase the sentence for the 70-year-old Stewart, who was treated for breast cancer in the period between her conviction and sentencing, or to explain why he will not.
Stewart denounced the appellate decision, pointing in particular to the recent decision to try some of the Guantanamo defendants at criminal trials in New York. She said that the timing of the decision in her case, “coming as it does on the eve of the arrival of the tortured men from offshore prison in Guantanamo,” was intended to intimidate lawyers who would be defending these men.
“If you’re going to be a lawyer for these people, you’d better toe very close to the line that the government has set out,” said Ms. Stewart. Otherwise, she added, you “will end up like Lynne Stewart. … This is a case that is bigger than just me personally.”
Support for Lynne Stewart is urgently needed in advance of her scheduled July 15 re-sentencing in Federal Court.
Those who can are asked to attend the court hearing at 500 Pearl Street, in Lower Manhattan, when Lynne Stewart is re-sentenced on JULY 15 at 2:30 pm. The support rally in front of Federal Court begins at 11 a.m.
The defense committee is also asking supporters to write personal letters to Judge Koeltl urging him to consider Lynne Stewarts’s many years of service to the people.
Address your letter to:
Honorable John G. Koeltl, United States District Judge, Southern District of New York,
500 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10007
BUT MAIL TO:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee,
350 Broadway, Suite 700, NY, NY 10013
(Don’t mail your letter to the judge.)
The Defense Committee will accumulate the letters for the attorneys who will then submit them to the Judge.
