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October 16, 2006
Stewart To Claim Uncontrolled Emotion Defense

Lynne Stewarts faces sentencing today for acting as a conduit for terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh" who helped organize the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. She transmitted his commands to his followers while in an American prison, helping to launch a terrorist network, and Stewart got convicted for providing material support. She has spent most of the intervening time traveling the nation and speaking out against the government, claiming she did nothing wrong and that the Bush administration wanted to silence her. Now, however, the New York Sun reports that she will change her tune significantly for her sentencing hearing:

The New York lawyer who was convicted of material support for terrorism after carrying messages for her client, terrorist sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, is scheduled to be sentenced today to as much as 30 years in prison.

She and her allies are pinning their hopes for leniency on a strategy that argues she became so emotionally involved in the sheik's case that she acted irrationally — a strategy that is underpinned by a sealed letter to the court from a psychiatrist.

A psychiatric report submitted to the federal judge in Manhattan who will decide the sentence, John Koeltl, claims that several emotional events in Stewart's life suggest her actions were motivated by "human factors of her client and his situation" and not by politics, according to portions of the psychiatric report.

The psychiatrist, Steven Teich, points to 11 emotional events that he claims prompted her to want to take action on Abdel Rahman's behalf, Stewart's attorneys say. Among the events that make Dr.Teich's list are her experiences seeing Abdel Rahman incarcerated and the 1995 suicide of a drug defendant named Dominick Maldonado, whom Stewart had once represented.

It's certainly a new position for Stewart, who has also claimed innocence through a lack of mens rea, the explicit decision to commit a criminal act. She says that her motivation was to ensure that Rahman did not lose any political ground while held by the US because she thought he would get deported instead of imprisoned. She has told the court that her "tragic flaw" is that she cares too much for her clients.

In other words, Stewart wants the court to take pity on her because she's a woman and can't control her emotions.

Nonsense. In the first place, one has to wonder why Stewart "cares" so much for an Islamist dedicated to killing her fellow Americans. Provide him an honest defense, of course, but an attorney who falls in love with a hate-monger and terrorist isn't lacking emotional discipline, she's lacking any values whatsoever. She now wants people to believe that she was blinded by the Blind Sheikh's pitiable circumstances, apparently incapable of accounting for the six people who died in the WTC attack and the terrorism she enabled with her communications to his radical followers in Egypt.

Stewart wants to play the patsy. However, patsies don't spend the lengthy time between her conviction and her sentencing appearing at numerous left-wing anti-war rallies, undermining the war effort and claiming to have been persecuted. Patsies don't tell crowds that they would do the same thing all over again under the same circumstances. The only saps involved in this case come from the multitudes who bought that story, and they're about to discover how gullible they've been.

Stewart faces as much as 30 years in prison for her promotion of terrorism during a time of war. She should get every last day of it.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at October 16, 2006 5:47 AM

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» So how about if we just hang her and be done with it? from Bill's Bites
Lynne Stewart: Lawyer for jihad Left-wing radical laywer Lynne Stewart will be sentenced this morning for her role in fomenting jihad for her client, convicted jihadist and NYC bomb plotter Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. The Associated Press casts her as [Read More]

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» Sentencing Day from A Blog For All
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» Terror-supporting lawyer to plea for mercy today during sentencing (UPDATE II) from Sister Toldjah
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Tracked on October 16, 2006 10:23 AM

» Judgement Day For Lynn Stewart from Stop The ACLU
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» Mixed Emotions... from Exile in Portales
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Tracked on October 16, 2006 12:43 PM

» Let's Make an Example of the Jihad Lawyer from Church and State
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» Lynne Stewart Will Burn in Hell, But Not Rot in Prison from Jeremayakovka
Why is this woman smiling? Flaming terrorist defender lawyer and believer in the violent overthrow of capitalism, Lynne Stewart, was just sentenced to all of 28 months in prison.... [Read More]

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Tracked on October 16, 2006 5:48 PM

» Good. Serves Her Right. from Joust The Facts
And it should have been longer! Attorney Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison for aiding terrorists.NEW YORK - A firebrand civil rights lawyer who has defended Black Panthers and anti-war radicals was sentenced Monday to nearly 2 [Read More]

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» American traitor gets only 28 months from reverse_vampyr
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Tracked on October 17, 2006 2:17 PM

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