Nation - New York Judges squabble over lawyer's terror sentence Chief judge wants lower-court judge to toughen sentence

By Larry Neumeister Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal appeals judges bickered at one another Tuesday as they pressured a lower-court judge to toughen the sentence of a lawyer convicted of terrorism charges. The judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided not to have the entire appeals court hear the appeal of lawyer Lynne Stewart's conviction and sentence of two years and four months in prison. But they took the unusual step of writing opinions critical of each other in announcing that decision. A three-judge appeals panel in the fall ordered a resentencing of the 70-year-old Stewart and required her to report to prison immediately. It also upheld the conviction of Stewart, who could face up to 30 years in prison on the charges. Stewart was convicted of providing material support to terrorists for letting an imprisoned Egyptian client, blind Sheik Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, communicate with followers after he was imprisoned for life for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks. Stewart also was convicted of conspiring to defraud the United States and of making false statements. Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs encouraged the judge who will resentence Stewart on April 22 to reconsider her sentence from scratch. He said U.S. District Judge John Koeltl failed to properly consider the terrorism ramifications of the case. He said Stewart's crime "tends to erode judicial confidence that lawyers can be entrusted with national secrets -- or, as in this case, with the means to trigger or promote a mass slaughter of innocents." He also suggested Koeltl should consider statements Stewart made after her sentencing, such as her saying in a broadcast interview she would do what she did again but "might handle it a little differently." Judge Rosemary Pooler said Jacobs was in effect asking Koeltl to impose the appeals panel's dissenting opinion, which had sought to have Stewart's sentence declared unreasonable and to require a considerably tougher sentence, rather than its majority opinion, which merely called for a resentencing. "Other judges may have views on the matter, but the case is not before them, and what they may say about it has as much force of law as if those views were published in a letter to the editor of their favorite local newspaper," Pooler wrote. She said calling for a vote by the judges on whether to all hear the case provides them "with an opportunity to opine on a case that was never before them." "This amounts to an exercise in free speech rather than an exercise of any judicial function," she said. Judge Jose A. Cabranes, though, said it was a mistake for all the judges, about a dozen of them, not to hear the case. He called Stewart's sentence unreasonable and blasted his fellow appeals court judges for not insisting on deciding important legal issues on a subject as critical as terrorism. "To refuse to decide issues that are squarely presented is an abdication of judicial responsibility," he said in a footnote. He said the three-judge panel only made a "belated glancing observation" that it had serious doubts about the reasonableness of Stewart's sentence. Cabranes said he was led to believe that the appeals panel was not really interested so much in hearing further explanation for the sentence that is imposed on Stewart but rather "the pronouncement of a sentence sufficiently higher than the original so that the important issues relating to the mitigation of terrorism crimes can be avoided." He added that an appeals court should not "identify significant sentencing error by winks and nods that it hopes the district court will understand and act on." Cabranes said the Stewart case gave the appeals court a golden opportunity to better define rules of law as they relate to terrorism cases, one in which he said the judge sentenced to little more than two years a lawyer "who aided a particularly nefarious and notorious terrorist to continue pursuing his deadly objectives." A lawyer for Stewart did not immediately return a phone call for comment Tuesday. Stewart's longtime friend Pat Levasseur told supporters in an e-mail that the appeals court had directed the sentencing judge "to throw the book at Lynne." Published: Thu, Feb 25, 2010

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