[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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