After Years of Outrage and Protest
People's Lawyer Lynne Stewart Released
January 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Pushed by outrage from all over the country and not wanting to have Lynne Stewart die while in their custody, the federal courts in a sudden about-face freed Stewart on New Year's Eve. Stewart, who was being held in a prison hospital in Texas, immediately flew home to New York with her husband, Ralph Poynter, to be with the rest of her family.
Above: Lynne Stewart greeted by supporters upon her arrival at an airport in New York City, January 1st, 2014
Photo: Matt Meyer/Resistance in Brooklyn
Stewart, who is 74 years old and suffering from terminal cancer, has been an ongoing target of the government's vindictive campaign against anyone who comes to the legal aid of those who, for a range of reasons, have come into the crosshairs of the U.S. empire and its massive apparatus of spying and repression. She has also inspired a national movement of support for release from her particularly cruel and unjust imprisonment.
In a motion now submitted by the U.S. attorney, the government asked that Stewart, who may have only months to live, have her sentence reduced to time served plus a supervised release of five years "in the event the defendant should outlive her current life expectancy."
The arrest, trial, and compassionless imprisonment of Lynne Stewart has been from the beginning an outrage. She has devoted her life to defending oppressed people, people who resisted injustice, and people whose criminal defense other lawyers wouldn't touch. Stewart was convicted for essentially doing her best to defend a controversial Egyptian defendant—in particular, making public a press release indicating her client's continuing opposition to the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak. The government construed this as material aid to a terrorist, while the U.S. government continued its very real material aid for the Egyptian military—the same military now using that aid to maintain its military dictatorship in Egypt.
For this, Stewart was originally sentenced to 28 months. But a federal appeals court overturned this as being too lenient, which resulted in Stewart being re-sentenced to 10 years. The court was well aware that she was suffering from breast cancer and that its sentence would effectively end her medical treatment.
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