Joseph Goldstein reports in the NYSun:
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.
“Ms. Stewart’s commitment to the protection of her client, the Sheik, in prison was magnified by emotions from her perceived failure to protect her former client Mr. Maldonado, which had, consequently, resulted in his death by suicide,” Mr. Teich wrote.
Excuses excuses.
Here’s some background on Stewart.
Judge Koeltl, show no mercy. I would love to see another Judge William Young-style ruling.
Update I: This morning’s Hot Air Vent is about Jihad Lynne (more here).
Update II: Read more via Captain Ed, Blog For All, Outside The Beltway, Smantix at Six Meat Buffet, Brainster
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This SHYSTER should be hung from the nearest lamppost, period.
Comment by PCD @ 10/16/2006 - 9:11 am
Hung in Times Square, PCD.
Comment by forest hunter @ 10/16/2006 - 11:04 am
Argh, pet peeve time. It’s hanged, not hung. Pictures are hung. Male porn stars are hung. People are hanged.
Comment by Severian @ 10/16/2006 - 11:18 am
Hung is the past tense of hanged. I wish she were tried in Utah. They use firing squads made up of civilian volunteers. Hell, I’d buy my own bullets.
Comment by PCD @ 10/16/2006 - 1:29 pm
Wrong, hanged is the past tense of hang. Hanged applies to execution, hung applies to other things. From dictionary.com:
5. to suspend (oneself) by the neck until dead: He hanged himself from a beam in the attic.
It’s not “hung” if you’re killing someone, it’s hanged.
Comment by Severian @ 10/16/2006 - 1:33 pm
I slump corrected, Sev. Hey it was late and as it turns out, the system failed once again anyway, unless of course, you’re an enemy of America and her citizens.
I blame Bush, Rove, and PCD! I will be pinning my “hopes for leniency on a strategy that argues…[I]…became so emotionally involved (read -so busted)……” yadda yadda yadda.
Comment by forest hunter @ 10/16/2006 - 5:54 pm
No worries, I just have a passion for correct usage of semi-obsolete terms, like defenestration.
Comment by Severian @ 10/16/2006 - 6:55 pm