I have a question for the A2K lawyers....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/nyregion/11stewart.html?ei=5094&en=d43440ee57f1d7a6&hp=&ex=1108184400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=

Lawyer Is Guilty of Aiding Terror
By JULIA PRESTON

Lynne F. Stewart, an outspoken lawyer known for representing a long list of unpopular defendants, was convicted yesterday by a federal jury in Manhattan of aiding Islamic terrorism by smuggling messages out of jail from a terrorist client.

In a startlingly sweeping verdict, Ms. Stewart was convicted on all five counts of providing material aid to terrorism and of lying to the government when she pledged to obey federal rules that barred her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, from communicating with his followers. Her co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Mohamed Yousry, were also convicted of all the charges against them.

The verdict was a major victory for Justice Department prosecutors in one of the country's most important terror cases since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Stewart's April 2002 indictment was announced in Washington by John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and the verdict was hailed yesterday by his successor, Alberto R. Gonzales.

The convictions "send a clear, unmistakable message that this department will pursue both those who carry out acts of terrorism and those who assist them with their murderous goals," Mr. Gonzales said.

After a trial that lasted more than seven months, the jurors announced their verdict after 12 days of deliberations that spanned four weeks. In a case watched by lawyers nationwide, the jurors were persuaded that Ms. Stewart had crossed a professional line, from vigorously representing her client to conspiring in his followers' plans to launch violence in Egypt.

In recent days the jurors asked for dozens of government exhibits that went to the question of whether Ms. Stewart intended to help the sheik's terrorist followers. One juror complained to the judge at one point of being harshly treated by another juror.

The jurors returned to the courtroom at 3.17 p.m. yesterday. As the foreman, Juror No. 329, announced their verdict on each count, Ms. Stewart slumped slightly in her chair, and her chief lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, put his hand on her shoulder. She grew pale and rubbed her eyes to stop tears from coming down her face.

There were gasps and sounds of weeping from Ms. Stewart's followers, who filled the wood-paneled courtroom. The daughter of Ms. Stewart's co-defendant Mohamed Yousry, Leslie Yousry Davis, began to sob and covered her face with her hands.

Afterward, Ms. Stewart said she was stunned and vowed to appeal the verdict. She called the trial a government assault on the practice of law.

"I see myself as being a symbol of what people rail against when they say our civil liberties are eroded," she said to a small cluster of her supporters outside the federal district courthouse. "I hope this will be a wake-up call to all the citizens of this country, that you can't lock up the lawyers, you can't tell the lawyers how to do their jobs."

"I will fight on, I'm not giving up," she promised defiantly. "I know I committed no crime. I know what I did was right."

But then her voice wavered and tears came to her eyes.

Ms. Stewart, who is 65, faces up to 30 years in jail. The judge, John G. Koeltl, set her sentencing for July 15. Because she was convicted of a felony, she will be immediately disbarred. She remains free on bail, but cannot travel outside New York State.

Although Judge Koeltl reminded the jurors repeatedly that Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center attacks were not at issue, images of the Qaeda leader and remembrances of the destruction he wrought pervaded the trial, which took place in a courthouse a few blocks from ground zero.

Ms. Stewart was convicted on two counts of conspiring to provide material aid to terrorists, by making the views and instructions of Mr. Abdel Rahman available to his followers in the Islamic Group, an organization in Egypt with a history of terrorist violence. She was also convicted of three counts of perjury and defrauding the government for flouting federal prison rules that barred Mr. Abdel Rahman, a blind Islamic cleric, from communicating with anyone outside his federal prison in Minnesota except his lawyers and his wife.

Mr. Sattar, 45, an Egyptian-born postal worker from Staten Island who worked as a paralegal in the sheik's 1995 trial, was convicted of conspiring to kill and kidnap in a foreign country, the most serious charge in the trial. He was also convicted of soliciting violence, because of an October 2000 fatwa, or religious edict, that he helped compose that called on Muslims around the world "to fight the Jews and kill them wherever they are." He has been imprisoned and will remain at the Metropolitan Correctional Center until his sentence.

The other co-defendant, Mr. Yousry, 48, an Arabic-language interpreter who helped Ms. Stewart and other lawyers speak with the sheik, was convicted of three counts of terrorism and conspiracy. Like Ms. Stewart, he was out on bail last night.

Ms. Stewart's troubles arose from her work over a decade to defend Mr. Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for inspiring a thwarted 1993 plot to bomb the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and other New York landmarks.

Because of the terror charges in the trial, the eight women and four men on the jury served anonymously, identified only by numbers and their seats in the jury box. Over the past two weeks there were many signs that they were wrestling intensely over the terror conspiracy charges against Ms. Stewart and her co-defendants.The jurors made no comment and left the courthouse at 3:40 p.m. in two vans.

Almost all of the 1,330 exhibits the prosecutors presented were transcripts of secret government audio recordings of calls by Mr. Sattar on his home telephone to the co-defendants and to Egyptian militants overseas, and videotapes of Ms. Stewart's prison meetings with Mr. Abdel Rahman, conducted in Arabic through Mr. Yousry.

The jury appeared to have focused on the evidence that clearly showed that Ms. Stewart had knowingly violated the legal letter of prison rules aimed at silencing the sheik. "She thought she could blow off the rules that apply to everyone else because she's a lawyer," said Anthony Barkow, the assistant United States attorney who made the government's final argument to the jury.

On the stand, Ms. Stewart sometimes appeared deaf to the vicious anti-American preachings of her client, Mr. Abdel Rahman.

The government never showed that any violence resulted from the defendants' actions. The defendants were not accused of aiding terrorism in the United States.

There was little dispute about the central facts in the case. After Mr. Abdel Rahman was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison, his followers issued a series of threats against the United States demanding his release. Prosecutors imposed rules, known as special administrative measures, that barred the sheik, already held in solitary confinement, from communicating with anyone outside prison but his lawyers and his wife.

Ms. Stewart repeatedly signed documents in which she agreed to uphold the rules.

She brought a letter containing messages from Islamic Group members to a meeting with the sheik in the prison in Rochester, Minn., in May 2000. She received a statement from the sheik and on June 14 called a reporter in Cairo and read him the statement. The sheik said he was withdrawing support for a cease-fire the Islamic Group had observed for three years in Egypt. The group never canceled the cease-fire.

Testifying on her own behalf, Ms. Stewart said the press release was part of a legal strategy that involved provoking the government if necessary in order to keep the sheik in the public eye. Ms. Stewart said she was acting within an unwritten lawyer's "bubble" in the prison rules that allowed her to defend her client as she thought best

Hmm.. I'm not a lawyer but this case seems like someone that got a bit over-zealous in her thinking.

If she signed an agreement to the limitation on communicating with his followers then she knew the implications of calling them and relaying info. If her point was that that limitation was unjust or illegal then the proper course would have been to challenge the order not violate it. (Maybe there had been challenges??? I'm not famaliar with all of the background on this one..)

It's all verra interesting though...

Also not a lawyer, but I'm just not making a connection between smuggling messages and any legal defense of the client.

Will attornies have second thoughts about defending anyone on a terrorist-related charge? Isn't it a bit difficult to work without the attorney client privilege?

I don't know that any of that violates Atty/client privilege. The phone conversations weren't with the Atty at all and it would depend on what exactly the video tapes were and how they were obtained.

They could just be standard security video of a prison hallway or it could be that prosecutors went to a judge and got specific authorization to tape based on probable cause that the atty was doing something criminal.

I got the impression that the idea of the prosecuting Stewart was for her abusing the Atty/client priv in order to violate a court order. There does have to be a way to counter that too doesn't there?

I'm interested in hearing what the bona fide lawyers on this forum have to say. To a layman, such as myself, this seems to be somewhat double-edged. On the one hand, it seems apparent that Ms. Stewart overstepped the bounds of attorney/client privilege and is guilty as charged. On the other, it is disturbing to see what sort of evidence was admitted at her trial. It seems to me -- again, speaking as a layman -- that the government quite seriously overstepped its bounds by videotaping privileged communication between a lwayer and her client. That this illegally obtained evidence was accepted by the court as untainted, is a clear indication of where this administration is heading. Again, I'd really like to see a professional comment here.

Attorney/Client privilege covers two different aspects. The Atty has a professional ethical responsibility to maintain confidentiality (this part isn't at issue here) and information (i.e. "relating to representation" and "work products") between the two can not be intercepted and used in a court proceeding againt the client. That didn't occur here either. It was used against the lawyer. According to the ABA WWW site one condition of the priviledge is that "the lawyer may not counsel or assist a client in conduct that is criminal or fraudulent".



You're making an assumption it was illegally obtained with absolutely no evidence of that being the case. A judge can authorize the recording of an Atty for purposes of an investigation of that lawyer's illegal conduct. It's entirely legal and it's been done for decades.

atty client privilege is kaput when the attorney is part of a conspiracy. I saw that on Law and Order, so its gotta be right

Aiding Terror
The attorney/client privilege belongs to the client. An attorney cannot disclose the content of privileged, confidential communications without her client's consent.

But this case does not involve a compelled disclosure of a privileged, confidential communication between a client and a lawyer. This case involves a press release. A press release (by its very nature) is NOT a privileged, confidential communication.

The client made a statement (intended to be a public statement) that he no longer supported a cease fire (peace). He made the statement after reading messages that his group sent to him through his lawyer. (What reasonable inferences can be made from that fact?) The lawyer knew she was forbidden from facilitating communication between her client and the Islamic Group. Through the press release, her client was essentially encouraging his group, the Islamic Group, to resume armed hostilities. This is the same client who was convicted for his part in a conspiracy to bomb the United Nations building in NYC. The client's lawyer gave the client's statement (in the form of a press release) to a reporter in Eqypt where the Islamic Group is located.

A reasonable jury could find that the lawyer was aiding terrorism. The lawyer also violated her agreement to obey the special prison rules that applied to her client. She lied when she said she wouldn't facilitate her client's communication with the outside world because that's exactly what she did. Was this a bona fide legal strategy? NO.

The jury found her guilty. I respect the jury's decision.

I stand corrected.

Thank you for that, Debra. I was intrigued by this case because of the lack of attention it received it the national media. I googled Lynn Stewart expecting to find a considerable amount of information because, in my eyes, it was a pretty big story. Apparently not. There was an article from the New York Times, but not much else. (current) I'll keep poking around.

Gus: I wouldn't want you to think that I'm ignoring your plea for the A2K lawyers to participate in your thread, but I haven't followed this case and so I have no opinion on it.

Now, returning you to your regularly scheduled programming . . .

I concur with Debra_Law's remarks.

Although I respect the jury verdict in Ms. Stewart's case because she does not deny that she facilitated the delivery of a message from her influential client (a convicted terrorist) encouraging his supporters in the Islamic Group to end the cease-fire (and, therefore, to engage in acts of violence/terrorism), I still do not approve of the AG's emergency regulation, 66 Fed. Reg. 55062, that permits the monitoring of privileged communications.

See the following:

COMMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS ON THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S ORDER REGARDING MONITORING OF CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS

I saw something on the news about this case...interesting. Bookmark.

NPR gave the case some fairly extensive coverage the day the verdict was delivered, including some quotes from the defendant herself. Their story might be archived at NPR.org/news.

Didn't catch that Merry.

I'm pretty sure it only got coverage here because the case was decided in a Manhattan courthouse.

The lack of media coverage has left me curious, is it me? Dosen't this story constitute a little more attention, especially considering the person found guilty was a lawyer who should have known better, hmm.