[News] Lynne Stewart Is Denied a New Trial
Anti-Imperialist News
News at freedomarchives.org
Wed Oct 26 11:31:04 EDT 2005
October 26, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/nyregion/26stewart.html
Lawyer in Terror Case Is Denied a New Trial
By <http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JULIA
PRESTON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JULIA
PRESTON&inline=nyt-per>JULIA PRESTON
The federal judge who presided over the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a New
York lawyer convicted in February of aiding terrorism, has upheld the
jury's verdict and denied her demands for a new trial based on her claims
of irregularities involving two jurors.
In two rulings issued late Monday, the judge, John G. Koeltl of Federal
District Court in Manhattan, also found that two of Ms. Stewart's lawyers,
Joshua Dratel and Jill Shellow-Lavine, had engaged in legal "misconduct" by
meeting with one of the jurors after the trial without notifying him or the
prosecutors.
Judge Koeltl did not punish Ms. Stewart's lawyers for what he termed a
clear violation of the rules. But he rejected their request that he conduct
an inquiry into statements by the juror, who told the judge and Ms.
Stewart's lawyers in the months after the trial that she had been coerced
by other jurors into voting to convict.
The jurors in Ms. Stewart's nearly eight-month trial served anonymously,
and their identities remain secret. They were identified in the trial by a
number assigned by the court and by the number of the seat they occupied in
the jury box.
Juror 39, a slight, gaunt-looking woman who sat in seat No. 9, wrote to
Judge Koeltl on March 25 saying she had voted to convict only because of
"the fear and intimidation I was made to feel for my life" during the
deliberations, which lasted 13 days spread over a month. She made similar
claims in a meeting with Ms. Stewart's lawyers on April 26.
But Judge Koeltl revealed in his ruling on Monday that he met with Juror
39, at her request, on Feb. 9, the day before the verdict was issued. He
said she had asked him, in a note, to clarify one of the charges. But "at
no point," he said, did she "suggest that anything untoward was happening"
in the deliberations.
According to court documents, Juror 39 also told Ms. Stewart's lawyers that
near the end of the deliberations, someone not on the jury had identified
her in public as the "holdout," which she found frightening. But Judge
Koeltl said there was no strong evidence to support the claim. Noting that
the courts have imposed high standards for a judge to question jurors after
a verdict, Judge Koeltl concluded that Juror 39's complaints were "post-hoc
efforts caused by dissatisfaction" that did not merit further inquiry.
He also rejected Ms. Stewart's arguments that another juror, No. 82, a male
Army veteran, had deceived the court by failing to disclose a bias against
criminal defendants. The judge dismissed as "stale hearsay" statements by a
prospective juror, who was not chosen to serve, who told Ms. Stewart's
lawyers that she heard Juror 82 express bias before the trial, according to
court documents.
Judge Koeltl found that the jurors were well justified in concluding from
the evidence that Ms. Stewart had knowingly conveyed tactical advice from
an imprisoned terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to his violent
followers in
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Egypt.
The jury decided reasonably, the judge said, that she intended for the
sheik's words and guidance to be "used to carry out and prepare for the
conspiracy to kill."
The ruling was a victory for two prosecutors who contested Ms. Stewart's
motions, Assistant United States Attorneys Robin L. Baker and Anthony S.
Barkow. The judge also upheld the verdicts against two other defendants,
Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a Staten Island postal worker, and Mohamed Yousry, Ms.
Stewart's Arabic translator. They are all scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 22.
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