History > 2006 > USA > Federal Justice (IV)

Ex-pastor gets 11 years for sex with teen

Updated 10/28/2006
2:55 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) — A former Baptist pastor who disappeared with a 15-year-old girl for a month and later pleaded guilty to raping her was sentenced Friday to more than 11 years in federal prison.

Lewis Lee, 54, admitted in May to four federal charges, including crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. In August, he was sentenced to 9 1/3 to 28 years in state prison after pleading guilty to seven counts of third-degree rape.

Lee will serve 11 years and three months in a federal prison and then the remainder of his time in state prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas McAvoy also ordered Lee to be supervised by authorities for 25 years after his release.

"Mr. Lee you have gone a long way to destroy the lives of the victim and her family. It is beyond my power to describe how heinous this crime is," McAvoy said.

The judge said he had little faith Lee could be rehabilitated in prison.

Lee was ordered to pay nearly $67,000 in restitution to cover the cost of mental health treatments for the girl and for some of the income the family's farm lost while the family searched for the teen.

McAvoy also imposed a list of restrictions if Lee ever gets out of prison, including barring him from ever having unsupervised contact with any minors.

At the sentencing, the victim's mother said Lee, their pastor and friend, "betrayed" them, and described the family's ordeal.

"This has been like living a nightmare ... but I never wake up, and it never goes away," she said.

The mother said her once-cheerful daughter has been left "confused, hurt and angry."

Lee, who is married, had been the girl's pastor at Christian Baptist Church in the central New York town of Sherburne before the two disappeared in mid-March from her family's dairy farm. The girl left willingly, but the state's legal age of consent is 17.

The pair set off a nationwide search, traveling as far west as Wyoming before Lee was arrested in April in Hagerstown, Md.

    Ex-pastor gets 11 years for sex with teen, UT, 28.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-28-missing-girl_x.htm

Enron's Skilling gets 24 years

Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:42 AM ET
Reuters
By Bruce Nichols

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Former Enron Corp. chief executive Jeff Skilling was sentenced on Monday to more than 24 years in prison for leading a financial fraud that destroyed the company and came to symbolize a dark era for corporate America.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, in handing out the harshest sentence yet in the Enron saga, said Skilling's crimes "have imposed on hundreds if not thousands of people a lifetime of poverty."

He allowed Skilling, 52, to remain out of jail, but mostly confined to his home with an electronic monitor on his ankle until the U.S. Bureau of Prisons orders him to report, likely within the next 90 days.

Skilling also was ordered to pay $45 million in restitution to Enron investors, who lost billions of dollars when the company collapsed. Thousands of employees lost their jobs and retirement funds.

FBI assistant director Chip Burrus said in a statement Skilling's punishment sent a message to white collar criminals.

"Corporate crooks should beware. If you decide to use business coffers as your personal piggy bank at the expense of investors and employees, you risk loss of personal freedom," he said.

Judge Lake's sentence of 24 years and four months was the lowest it could have been within federal guidelines for the white collar crime.

Skilling, once one of corporate America's brightest and brashest stars, was subdued but stoic, telling reporters he was "disappointed" by the verdict but would appeal the 19 criminal counts against him.

"I don't blame the judge for what he did. I have a constitutional right to appeal, and I think we'll win," he said.

Skilling showed little emotion during the hearing, but occasionally looked back at wife, Rebecca, who sobbed in the gallery.

On May 25, Skilling and Enron founder Ken Lay were found guilty of defrauding investors by using off-the-books deals to hide debt and inflate profits.

Enron, once the country's seventh largest company, collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001 when the deals were disclosed.

The resulting scandal rocked Wall Street and prompted reforms in the way companies report their finances.

Lay, 64, died of a heart attack in July while vacationing in Colorado. Following legal precedent, Judge Lake threw out the Lay convictions on October 17 because Lay died before a final judgment had been entered and before he could appeal.

In comments to the court before sentencing, Skilling said he was remorseful for what happened at Enron, but maintained he had committed no crime.

"I can't imagine more remorse. I had friends who died, good men," he said, appearing to choke up momentarily. "All of that being said, your honor, I'm innocent of these charges. I'm innocent of every one of these charges."

As he did in testimony during his trial, Skilling blamed the demise of Enron on a credit and liquidity crunch.

"The company did not have enough dry powder to deal with it. That, in sum and substance, is what happened in Enron," he said.

He and Lay testified that the crisis of confidence that engulfed Enron was caused by the actions of a few rogue employees, primarily former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.

Fastow confessed to skimming millions of dollars from the off-the-books deals he set up at Skilling's direction. He pleaded guilty, cooperated with prosecutors and received a six-year prison sentence.

Prior to sentencing, several former Enron investors and employees made "victim impact statements" in which most of them called for Lake to impose the maximum sentence, which would have been just over 30 years.

"The worst mistake Ken Lay ever did was to hire you," former employee Ann Beliveaux told Skilling. "When things got bad, you jumped ship because you knew the sky was getting ready to fall."

"I had $1.3 million and all I have to show for it is two clocks (for service awards)," said another former employee Charles Prestwood.

"People think things like that don't happen in America, but it does. It happened to us," he said.

Skilling joins other prominent executives whose corner-office careers ended in prison cells. WorldCom founder Bernard Ebbers received a 25-year sentence, former Tyco chairman Dennis Kozlowski got 8 to 25 years, and John and Timothy Rigas of Adelphia received 15 and 20 year sentences, respectively.

Prosecutor Sean Berkowitz argued for a long sentence for Skilling, saying that Enron's demise had wide-ranging effects.

"The integrity of the marketplace as a whole was shaken by what happened at Enron," he said. "People lost their trust and their faith in the marketplace.

"Enron symbolized more than any other company the era of corporate fraud," Berkowitz said.

But Skilling's attorney Daniel Petrocelli argued for a sentence of 7 to 10 years, saying Skilling had meant no harm.

"Mr. Skilling set out to harm nobody. He didn't loot the company, he didn't engage in self-dealing ... he was not motivated by greed," he said.

    Enron's Skilling gets 24 years, NYT, 24.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-24T064205Z_01_N20201208_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENRON-SKILLING.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

Lawyer Convicted in Terror Case Lied on the Stand, a Juror Says

October 21, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

He was known as Juror 8, for the jury box chair where he listened silently for more than six months as the convoluted evidence unfolded in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, the radical defense lawyer accused of aiding Islamic terrorism.

The jurors argued behind closed doors in Federal District Court in Manhattan for another month before they finally agreed to convict Ms. Stewart on all five charges she faced for smuggling messages out of prison from her terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

“We found what jurors called the smoking gun,” Juror 8 said in an interview. “Lynne Stewart knew full well that violence was going to be committed,” he said, after she publicized the sheik’s words. He said the jurors also concluded that she had lied in her testimony.

So on Monday, 20 months after the verdict, Juror 8 kept his eye on the television, waiting for news of her sentence. When he heard that Judge John G. Koeltl had reduced the 30 years sought by the government to 28 months in prison, Juror 8 said he was first disbelieving, then “vastly disappointed.”

He said the light sentence obscured facts the jurors had painstakingly linked together that tied Ms. Stewart to terrorism. He believes only the jurors understood their meaning in the complex case.

He does not speak for all the jurors. Because of the serious terrorism charges, they served anonymously, and the names of the eight women and four men were known to only one court administrator. One other, a woman known as Juror 9, made her views known this week. “I am glad that the sentence was as short as it was, but sorry that she was sentenced to any time at all,” Juror 9 said in a statement issued by her lawyer, Steven Masef.

“The right thing for the judge to have done,” she said, “was to have overturned the jury verdict and thrown the whole case out.”

Although she voted to convict, Juror 9 wrote a letter to Judge Koeltl in March 2005 saying she had done it “as a result of the fear and intimidation I was made to feel for my life” in the jury room. The judge ruled that her objections were not sufficient to overturn the verdict. Juror 8 said that Juror 9 was one of two jurors who held out for acquittal long into the deliberations.

Juror 8 still does not want his name published, saying he continues to have moments of fear because of his vote to convict Ms. Stewart. He is a research scientist in his early 60’s who holds an advanced academic degree from a prominent East Coast university and lives in Manhattan.

He came forward for an interview armed with trial exhibit numbers and typewritten notes, giving the most detailed look to date inside the jury’s grueling, often angry deliberations. He said he wanted to counter his dismay about the sentence by leaving a public record about the jury’s findings.

The jurors’ mining of the evidence, he said, convinced them that Ms. Stewart was aware that one militant from Abdel Rahman’s organization in Egypt, the Islamic Group, planned to foment terror attacks using a message from the sheik that Ms. Stewart released. The sheik, a blind Islamic cleric from Egypt, is serving a life sentence for his role in a 1993 plot to bomb New York City landmarks.

Juror 8 said the militant, Rifai Taha, a fugitive convicted terrorist, emerged as a major and very chilling figure in the trial. Prosecutors showed a videotape of Mr. Taha sitting with Osama bin Laden somewhere in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, calling for violence against Americans.

One message that Ms. Stewart carried into prison on a visit to the sheik in May 2000, violating special restrictions, was from Mr. Taha. He sought guidance about a cease-fire the sheik’s followers were observing in Egypt, which Mr. Taha was chafing to cancel.

Ms. Stewart testified that she was not aware of Mr. Taha’s violent history or his efforts to spur a new campaign of attacks against Egypt’s government.

But according to Juror 8, the jury found clear evidence among the stacks of prosecution documents and wiretap transcripts that she did know of Mr. Taha’s extremist violence as early as 1998.

“There’s the belief that she didn’t know who Taha was, that she didn’t think anything bad would happen,” Juror 8 said. “I want to state very emphatically: that is a complete lie.”

Even more persuasive to the jury, Juror 8 contended, was the evidence about the chain of events after Ms. Stewart called a reporter in Egypt with the sheik’s response to Mr. Taha, in which he said he no longer supported the cease-fire.

The sheik’s new position provoked a furor in Egypt. According to evidence the jurors examined, Juror 8 said, several of his supporters warned in public comments and letters sent to Ms. Stewart that his words could prompt violence. But a week later Ms. Stewart issued a second press release in which the sheik once again criticized the cease-fire.

Juror 8 said the jurors found that Mr. Taha had used the sheik’s words to recruit at least one Egyptian militant to start plotting an attack.

“She smuggled Taha’s message in,” Juror 8 said. “She smuggled Rahman’s reply out. She was told that violence would occur, and she had a second press conference to reinforce the first. No person who was opposed to violence would conduct themselves in that manner.”

Ultimately, the cease-fire was not canceled.

Juror 8 said he was offended after the Feb. 10, 2005, verdict when Ms. Stewart said that the jurors had been influenced by post-Sept. 11 fears of terrorism. “It wasn’t politics, it was her actions,” he said. “The jury did not speculate. We dealt with the evidence.”

It is not uncommon for jurors, who have no say in sentencing, to disagree with a judge’s decision. In court on Monday, Judge Koeltl cited laws requiring him to consider other factors besides the guilty verdict, such as Ms. Stewart’s past work and the possibility that she would repeat her crime.

While the judge found that Ms. Stewart, who is 67, had engaged in “extraordinarily severe” criminal conduct that “plainly went beyond any reasonable bounds of zealous advocacy,” he also considered her long career defending unpopular clients, her recent bout with cancer and her disbarment. He allowed her to remain free on bail while she pursues her appeal.

Juror 8 said he gained respect for Judge Koeltl during the trial. “He’s a very logical man,” he said. “I’m sure he was led logically to that sentence.” The judge was appointed to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton.

The juror insisted that the looming figure of Mr. bin Laden had no impact on the jurors, who were repeatedly instructed he had no role in the case.

“The judge told me he had no part, so he had no part,” Juror 8 said. “And 11 other people agreed. We did not go off reservation.”

He said he was distressed by the sight of Ms. Stewart celebrating on Monday with cheering supporters outside the courthouse. “The end of this process,” he said, “is a person who committed very serious crimes out on the street smiling with bouquets of roses.”

    Lawyer Convicted in Terror Case Lied on the Stand, a Juror Says, NYT, 21.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/nyregion/21stewart.html

Judge orders Cheney visitor logs opened

Updated 10/19/2006 6:26 PM ET
By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer
USA Today

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and residence, an order that could spark a late election-season debate over lobbyists' White House access.

While researching the access lobbyists and others had on the White House, The Washington Post asked in June for two years of White House visitor logs. The Secret Service refused to process the request, which government attorneys called "a fishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency."

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld.

The Secret Service can still try to withhold the records but, in a written ruling Thursday, Urbina questioned the agency's primary argument — that the logs are protected by Cheney's right to executive privilege.

Republicans have suffered a spate of bad news lately. Ohio Rep. Bob Ney pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying investigation, Florida Rep. Mark Foley resigned after reports of his sexually explicit Internet conversations with teenage House pages, and the FBI intensified its corruption investigation into Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon.

If Cheney's visitor logs show meetings with lobbyists, releasing them just weeks before Election Day could provide ammunition to Democrats.

"The political price is very high," said L. Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College. "Even more than that, Cheney has a vested interest in keeping them out of public eye at a time when people will pay attention to them. After the election, they will pay much less attention."

The newspaper sought logs for anyone visiting Cheney, his legal counsel, chief spokesman and other top aides and advisers.

The Secret Service had no comment on the ruling Thursday. In court documents, government attorneys said releasing the documents would infringe on Cheney's ability to seek advice.

"This case is about protecting the effective functioning of the vice presidency under the Constitution," attorneys wrote.

A lawsuit over similar records revealed last month that Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed — key figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal — landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House.

The Post cited those records, which were released to the Democratic Party and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, as evidence that the documents should be released.

    Judge orders Cheney visitor logs opened, UT, 19.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-19-cheney-logs_x.htm

Editorial

A Dangerous New Order

October 19, 2006
The New York Times

Once President Bush signed the new law on military tribunals, administration officials and Republican leaders in Congress wasted no time giving Americans a taste of the new order created by this unconstitutional act.

Within hours, Justice Department lawyers notified the federal courts that they no longer had the authority to hear pending lawsuits filed by attorneys on behalf of inmates of the penal camp at Guantánamo Bay. They cited passages in the bill that suspend the fundamental principle of habeas corpus, making Mr. Bush the first president since the Civil War to take that undemocratic step.

Not satisfied with having won the vote, Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, quickly issued a statement accusing Democrats who opposed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 of putting “their liberal agenda ahead of the security of America.” He said the Democrats “would gingerly pamper the terrorists who plan to destroy innocent Americans’ lives” and create “new rights for terrorists.”

This nonsense is part of the Republicans’ scare-America-first strategy for the elections. No Democrat advocated pampering terrorists — gingerly or otherwise — or giving them new rights. Democratic amendments to the bill sought to protect everyone’s right to a fair trial while providing a legal way to convict terrorists.

Americans will hear more of this ahead of the election. They also will hear Mr. Bush say that he finally has the power to bring to justice a handful of men behind the 9/11 attacks. The truth is that Mr. Bush could have done that long ago, but chose to detain them illegally at hidden C.I.A. camps to extract information. He sent them to Guantánamo only to stampede Congress into passing the new law.

The 60 or so men at Guantánamo who are now facing tribunals — out of about 450 inmates — also could have been tried years ago if Mr. Bush had not rebuffed efforts by Congress to create suitable courts. He imposed a system of kangaroo courts that was more about expanding his power than about combating terrorism.

While the Republicans pretend that this bill will make America safer, let’s be clear about its real dangers. It sets up a separate system of justice for any foreigner whom Mr. Bush chooses to designate as an “illegal enemy combatant.” It raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge their detentions. It does not require the government to release prisoners who are not being charged, or a prisoner who is exonerated by the tribunals.

The law does not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening. It further damages the nation’s reputation and, by repudiating key protections of the Geneva Conventions, it needlessly increases the danger to any American soldier captured in battle.

In the short run, voters should see through the fog created by the Republican campaign machine. It will be up to the courts to repair the harm this law has done to the Constitution.

    A Dangerous New Order, NYT, 19.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/opinion/19thu1.html

Many Ground Zero Workers Gain Chance at Lawsuits

October 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA

A federal judge has rejected the city’s claim that it is protected by law from being sued over the way it handled rescue and recovery operations at ground zero. The ruling opens the way for lawsuits by thousands of workers who say they were made sick by exposure to toxic substances during the 10-month cleanup.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of United States District Court in Manhattan rejected the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuits. In a 99-page decision released yesterday afternoon, he stated that state and federal statutes do provide some immunity for the city, its private contractors and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for actions undertaken in response to an enemy attack. However, the judge said that protection is not universal and varies by time and place, making it necessary to hear the details of individual cases.

“The fact-intensive nature of the issue makes its resolution unsuitable for resolution by motion,” Judge Hellerstein concluded. “Discovery, additional proceedings and a more extensive factual record, and perhaps a trial, will be required.”

Michael A. Cardozo, the corporation counsel for the city, said in a statement that although the judge ruled that the legal case can proceed, he made it clear that the issue of immunity would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“We believe that as the facts fully emerge, the complex decisions that were carefully and thoughtfully made during the months after 9/11 will demonstrate the enormous good work done by the city and its contractors, and the absence of any legal liabilities,” Mr. Cardozo said.

David Worby, the lawyer who is leading the legal action on behalf of the workers, called the decision a clear victory for the firefighters, police officers and construction workers who say they became sick after responding to the Sept. 11 crisis.

“The bottom line of what the court is trying to say is that these are not the kind of decisions for these heroes that should be settled by summary judgments,” Mr. Worby said. “They should have their day in court.”

Mr. Worby said that when he spoke to some of his clients after the decision was released, they cried. “It all started with people telling them what they had was just a cough, and it’s taken three years to prove that that was not true,” he said.

In his decision, Judge Hellerstein outlined proceedings in which up to 3,000 ailing workers would have a chance to describe what happened to them; whom they were working for at the time they got sick; when they were at ground zero; and what protective gear was available to them while on the site.

In all, more than 8,000 workers have filed suit against the city and dozens of its contractors who worked on the cleanup of ground zero.

The other cases would be heard in subsequent proceedings.

While some of the cases could end up going to trial, the judge offered to appoint a special master, with the approval of the parties, who could engage in mediation and speed resolution of the claims.

“If even a minority of plaintiffs suffered serious injuries to their respiratory tracts arising from the acrid air of Sept. 11, their claims deserve to be heard when a recovery could make a difference to their lives,” Judge Hellerstein wrote.

James E. Tyrrell Jr., a lawyer with the Washington firm Patton Boggs who is leading the city’s defense in this case, said the city was clearly disappointed that “the court is not in a position to conclude that either all or some substantial portion of actions taken can be treated as being covered by immunity at this time.” While partly rejecting the immunity claims by the city and the Port Authority, Judge Hellerstein dismissed the charges against Con Edison and Silverstein Properties, which had been named as defendants because they held leases on ground zero property.

The judge ordered a conference to be held on Nov. 3 to consider the appointment of a special master and other issues.

The city’s substantial legal costs are being covered by a special captive insurance company that was created when Congress established a $1 billion insurance fund in 2003.

    Many Ground Zero Workers Gain Chance at Lawsuits, NYT, 18.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/18toxic.html

Ex-F.D.A. Chief Pleads Guilty in Stock Case

October 18, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — Lester M. Crawford, the former commissioner of food and drugs, pleaded guilty Tuesday to lying and conflict-of-interest charges in connection with stock he and his wife owned in companies regulated by the F.D.A.

Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, who accepted Dr. Crawford’s plea to two misdemeanor charges, scheduled sentencing for Jan. 22 in Federal District Court.

Dr. Crawford, 68, could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 on each of the two counts, but his lawyer has said she expects him to be placed on probation.

Senior employees of the agency are barred from owning shares in companies it regulates. Dr. Crawford and his wife, Catherine, accordingly sold their holdings in nine companies around the time he became deputy commissioner early in 2002, the government said.

But they retained shares in three others: the food giants Sysco and Pepsico, and Kimberly-Clark, which makes consumer health products and other goods.

In addition, Mrs. Crawford held shares in another regulated company, Wal-Mart, but her husband did not list them in his 2002 financial disclosure.

In addition, Dr. Crawford, who is a veterinarian and pharmacologist, exercised options to buy shares in a poultry biotechnology company regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in 2003 and 2004, earning almost $30,000 altogether. He did not list them in disclosure filings, as he should have, even though he properly reported the transactions on his tax returns, the government said.

The conflict-of-interest charges stemmed from the Crawfords’ ownership of shares in Pepsico and Sysco while he was chairman of the Obesity Working Group at the F.D.A., which was reviewing calorie-content labeling for soft drinks.

There is no evidence that the obesity group’s conclusions were altered because of the Crawfords’ ownership of stock, Howard Sklamberg, an assistant United States attorney, told Judge Robinson.

Mrs. Crawford’s brother, William W. Walker III of Birmingham, Ala., said his sister had told him “if they had to do it over again, they’d put everything in a blind trust.”

    Ex-F.D.A. Chief Pleads Guilty in Stock Case, NYT, 18.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/washington/18fda.html

Lawyer, Facing 30 Years, Gets 28 Months, to Dismay of U.S.

October 17, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

Lynne F. Stewart, the radical defense lawyer, was sentenced yesterday to two years and four months in prison on charges that she smuggled messages from an imprisoned terrorist client to his violent followers in Egypt.

The sentence, handed down by Judge John G. Koeltl in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was significantly lower than the 30 years sought by prosecutors. He cited the service Ms. Stewart, who is 67, had provided in her three-decade career as a government-appointed lawyer for unsavory criminals and penniless outcasts.

The judge allowed her to remain free on bail while a higher court hears her appeal, saying there was a possibility that her conviction might be overturned.

The sentence was an unexpected setback for the Justice Department in a case the Bush administration has frequently highlighted to show the effectiveness of its tough policy on terror prosecutions. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft devoted a chapter to it in his recent memoir. Defense lawyers and other supporters of Ms. Stewart had warned that a severe sentence would have a chilling effect, dissuading others from representing clients accused of terrorism.

In a brief statement to the judge before the sentence, Ms. Stewart, shaking and barely suppressing tears, refrained from political comment or discussion of her case, but noted that she would never be permitted to practice law again.

“The end of my career is truly like a sword in my side,” she said. “I don’t want to be in prison,” she pleaded. “Permit me to live in the world and live out my life, productively, lovingly, righteously.”

Ms. Stewart’s lawyers, citing her recent bout of breast cancer, had asked the judge not to give her any prison time.

But Judge Koeltl said there had been “an irreducible core of extraordinarily severe criminal conduct” in her actions on behalf of the client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind fundamentalist Islamic cleric who is serving a life sentence for plotting to bomb New York City landmarks. Ms. Stewart was convicted on Feb. 10, 2005, of conspiring to provide material aid to terrorism by smuggling the sheik’s messages encouraging violence by his militant followers in Egypt.

While agreeing that Ms. Stewart had flouted the law and deceived the government by breaking prison rules to publicize the sheik’s messages, Judge Koeltl broadly rejected the prosecutors’ portrayal of her as a serial liar and terrorist conspirator who would be a danger to society if she remained free.

Instead, he focused on her past service as a lawyer. “She has represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular,” Judge Koeltl said, adding that Ms. Stewart had demonstrated “enormous skill and dedication” in her legal work and earned little money from it.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to her clients but to the nation,” Judge Koeltl told a crowded but hushed courtroom.

The judge acknowledged that Ms. Stewart’s crimes were “serious, involved dishonesty and breach of trust,” and led to “potentially lethal consequences.” But he appears to have been impressed by about 1,100 letters of support she received from law professors, former prosecutors, retired judges and former clients. Among the clients was Matias Reyes, a federal inmate who told how she helped him confess that he was the true attacker in the infamous Central Park jogger case, after others had been wrongfully convicted.

The judge pointed out that Ms. Stewart would lose her license to practice law as a result of her conviction and sentence, which he said was a form of punishment, and that she is barred from having any contact with Mr. Abdel Rahman. He said the chance that her crimes would recur was “nil,” and noted there had been no evidence that anyone was harmed as a result of her actions.

He also mentioned that there was a “statistically significant” chance that Ms. Stewart’s breast cancer would recur.

As the judge read the sentence, Ms. Stewart’s face brightened with a grin of surprised relief. She flashed a quick clenched fist of victory to her relatives in the gallery.

Judge Koeltl imposed a relatively tough sentence on one of Ms. Stewart’s co-defendants, though it also fell short of what the government had sought. A former Staten Island postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, 46, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for negotiating by telephone with a follower of the sheik’s who was an associate of Osama bin Laden’s to try to bring an end to a cease-fire by Mr. Abdel Rahman’s group in Egypt. Mr. Sattar also wrote and released a statement he called a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for the killing of Jews. Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence.

The third co-defendant, Mohamed Yousry, 51, Ms. Stewart’s Arabic translator in her discussions with the sheik, was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison.

Judge Koeltl said that Mr. Yousry was “the necessary link” in a conspiracy with Ms. Stewart to smuggle prohibited letters into prison for the sheik and convey his replies to his followers. Prosecutors wanted Mr. Yousry to serve 20 years in prison.

Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, attended the sentencing yesterday. He and his prosecutors left the courtroom without comment. “The government is disappointed in the sentences imposed today,” Mr. Garcia said in a statement later. “We will be exploring our appellate options.”

One of his assistants, Andrew Dember, had said before the sentencing that Ms. Stewart knew that she was smuggling terrorist messages. “She stepped over the line from being a lawyer to being a clear-cut criminal,” he said, who had “endangered the lives of innocents.”

Mr. Dember dismissed the notion that Ms. Stewart’s sentence could have a chilling effect, saying that none of her actions “had anything to do with legitimate lawyering or legal representation of her client.”

One of Ms. Stewart’s lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel, said the judge did not need to impose a severe sentence because “the message has been sent loud and clear” that Ms. Stewart committed serious mistakes and lapses of judgment in representing the sheik, as she acknowledged in recent weeks.

When Ms. Stewart emerged from the courthouse, a few blocks from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan, she was greeted with bouquets of roses from a crowded of elated, cheering supporters who had waited outside for hours after being blocked by federal marshals from attending the proceedings.

“This is a great victory against an overreaching government,” Ms. Stewart said, returning to her familiar feisty rhetoric, as she was embraced by her husband, Ralph Poynter, and her three grandchildren. “I hope the government realizes their error, because I am back out,” she said. “And I am staying out until after an appeal that I hope will vindicate me, that I hope will make me back into the lawyer that I was.”

Ms. Stewart said she was grateful to the judge for giving her “time off for good behavior.” She had been ready to go straight to jail when she came to court, she said, carrying a pair of sweat pants in a plastic bag. She said if she eventually has to serve the 28-month sentence, “I could do it standing on my head.”

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting.

    Lawyer, Facing 30 Years, Gets 28 Months, to Dismay of U.S., NYT, 17.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/nyregion/17stewart.html?hp&ex=1161144000&en=70a4882097ec1b45&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote

October 11, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

MACON, Miss., Oct. 5 — The Justice Department has chosen this no-stoplight, courthouse town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.

The action represents a sharp shift, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is charging blacks with voting fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks’ right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.

The Justice Department’s main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles to the southwest. Mr. Brown, tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating — with the help of others — “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians — ones supported by Mr. Brown, that is — in office.

To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.

Mr. Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in supporting documents of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.

To run against the county prosecutor — one of two white officeholders in Noxubee — Mr. Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to the supporting documents, who never even bothered to turn on the gas or electricity at his rented apartment. That candidate was disqualified.Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population here, are circumspect when discussing Mr. Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county.

Still, many whites said privately they welcomed the Justice Department’s lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.

“In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play,” said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Mr. Brown tried to oust, in 2003. “They were doing something wrong.”

Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, the white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. “There’s a lot of voting irregularities, but that’s all I’m going to say,” one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.

The Justice Department’s voting rights expert is less reserved. “Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them,” the expert, Theodore S. Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.

Mr. Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse, but that is where he casually greets visitors, in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, “when I was in Maxwell prison in ’95 and ’96, the show went right on,” he said.

There are so few whites in the county, Mr. Brown suggests, that the tactics he is accused of are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.

“They can’t win anyway unless we choose to vote for them,” he said with a smile. “If I was doing something wrong — that’s like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone.”

He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of whites who feel disenfranchised, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots, or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. “I wouldn’t sign my name,” Mr. Brown said.

But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit, and wants to force Mr. Brown to agree to the same cease-and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.

The state’s Democratic establishment has hardly rallied around Mr. Brown; privately some Democrats here express disdain for his tactics. Instead, he is being defended by a maverick Republican lawyer who sees the suit as an example of undue interference in the affairs of a political party.

“To do what they want to do, they would virtually have to take over the Democratic Party,” said the lawyer, Wilbur Colom, adding that Mr. Brown’s notoriety had made him the focus of the investigation. “I believe they were under so much pressure because of Ike’s very sophisticated election operation. He is a Karl Rove genius on the Noxubee County level.”

In Jackson, though, a leading light in Mr. Brown’s own party, Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark, a longtime moderate in state politics, refused to endorse him.

“Anybody who tries to prevent people from voting is breaking the law,” Mr. Clark said. “I certainly suspect some of that has been going on.”

Back in Macon, in the shadow of the courthouse green’s standard-issue Confederate monument, Mr. Brown spoke of history: “They had their way all the time. They no longer have their way. That’s what it’s all about.” The case is “all about politics,” he said, “all about them trying to keep me from picking the lock.”

But Mr. Walker, the county prosecutor, insisted the past had nothing to do with the case against Mr. Brown. “I wouldn’t sit here and pretend black people haven’t been mistreated,” he said. “I hate what happened in the past. But I can’t do anything about it.”

    U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote, NYT, 11.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/us/politics/11voting.html

Court blocks Arizona voter ID law enforcement

Thu Oct 5, 2006 10:53 PM ET
Reuters



PHOENIX (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked an Arizona state law requiring voters to present identification at polling stations and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an emergency motion by opponents of the law for an injunction to prevent the law's voter identification requirements from taking effect for the November 7 elections.

The ruling by the San Francisco-based court also denied enforcement of a measure requiring voters to produce proof of citizenship to register to vote. The deadline to register to vote in the election is next Monday.

The law became effective two years ago under Proposition 200, a measure passed by voters to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. It required people to produce proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote, and picture ID, such as a driver's license, or two pieces of nonphoto ID, in order to cast a ballot.

Last month, in a move also aimed at illegal immigrants, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to require Americans to provide proof of U.S. citizenship in order to vote in federal elections.

Opponents of the Arizona law said it discriminated against minorities and the poor, who might not have funds to obtain the necessary proof of identification.

The Arizona Attorney General's Office said it would seek an immediate review of the ruling and would take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary in coming days.

Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer said the ruling could lead to "extreme confusion" on polling day.

"This is very alarming to have the Court of Appeals in San Francisco stay these voting measures as passed by the people of Arizona," Brewer said in a statement.

"The fact is we very successfully implemented identification at the polls during September's primary election without a hitch," added Brewer.

(Additional reporting by David Schwartz)

    Court blocks Arizona voter ID law enforcement, R, 5.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-06T025346Z_01_N05273558_RTRUKOC_0_US-COURT-VOTING.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

Pennsylvania man charged al Qaeda plot attempt

Wed Oct 4, 2006 1:42 PM ET
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania man, arrested in an FBI sting operation, was accused by a federal grand jury of trying to conspire with al Qaeda to destroy major U.S. oil and gas pipelines and disrupt the economy.

Michael Curtis Reynolds, 47, could face up to 80 years in prison and fines totaling $1.5 million if found guilty, according to the indictment filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

Defense lawyer Joseph O'Brien, who is defending Reynolds, had no comment.

The FBI arrested Reynolds in a sting in December 2005 when he was traveling to Idaho in an attempt to collect $40,000 he believed was payment for helping to blow up sections of the Transcontinental Pipeline, the indictment alleges.

The pipeline carries natural gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast to New York City via Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The prosecution said Reynolds began communicating with what he believed were al Qaeda operatives through a Web-based chat group in October 2005. His contact in the forum however was not a member of al Qaeda, and he then began cooperating with the authorities in their investigation of Reynolds.

The alleged plot included a plan to detonate propane trucks along the Alaska Pipeline and to blow up oil refineries in New Jersey and Wyoming.

    Pennsylvania man charged al Qaeda plot attempt, R, 4.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-04T174247Z_01_N04384712_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-QAEDA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

New Trial for Woman in 1981 Brink’s Case Is Reopening Old Wounds

October 1, 2006
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO

It has been a quarter-century since a group of self-styled freedom fighters, including Judith A. Clark, carried out an armored-car robbery in Rockland County, N.Y.

The holdup was a final eruption of Vietnam-era extremism and a shattering event for Rockland County, which lost two local police officers and a Brink’s guard.

The deep wounds left by that crime were reopened three years ago when Kathy Boudin, who served as a decoy in a getaway car, won parole.

Now, the victims’ families face the prospect of a new trial for another admitted participant, Ms. Clark, who was in another getaway car. On Sept. 21, a federal judge overturned Ms. Clark’s conviction, in a decision that held that she effectively had no legal counsel at her trial in 1983, when she chose to represent herself and then boycotted some of the proceedings.

“We in the law enforcement community are pretty outraged that this has transpired,” said Robert W. Van Cura, chief of the South Nyack police department. “The trial judge at the time went to great lengths to warn her about the dangers of self-representation. She clearly understood the proceedings.”

But friends and relatives of Ms. Clark were overjoyed by the decision. They and her lawyers say that since her conviction, Ms. Clark, the daughter of a onetime Communist newspaper editor and a prominent marketing executive, has become a new person, accepting responsibility for her actions and forging a strong relationship with her daughter, who was a baby at the time of the holdup.

“She’s a changed woman,” said Leon Friedman, one of Ms. Clark’s lawyers, who is a law professor at Hofstra University. “She is very sorry for what happened. She realizes what a terrible mess she made. She has taken all kinds of constructive steps in her life, and she’s a different human being than the one who took part in those terrible events.”

On Oct. 20, 1981, a group of the radicals tried to make off with $1.6 million from a Brink’s truck outside the Nanuet National Bank at a shopping center in Nanuet. A guard, Peter Paige, was killed, and a shootout at a roadblock left two police officers from Nyack dead: Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown.

In the next five years, the police rounded up more than 20 suspects, including members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army. Even today, one suspect, Cheri Laverne Dalton, who changed her name to Nehanda Obiodun, remains a fugitive; she was last reported to be living in Cuba.

The Rockland County district attorney, Michael E. Bongiorno, said he planned to appeal the ruling that overturned Ms. Clark’s conviction. “I strongly and respectfully disagree with the judge’s decision and her legal reasoning,” he said.

Ms. Clark, then 31, was arrested on the afternoon of the robbery and has been imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County. She would almost certainly face three charges of second-degree murder, as she did before.

But her supporters say that a new trial, or a plea deal, could yield a better outcome. Even if she is convicted again, a new judge could choose to make her sentences of 25 years to life concurrent rather than consecutive.

Ms. Boudin, who was a fellow inmate at Bedford Hills, pleaded guilty to a single charge of murder and one of robbery and received a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.

In 2003, after a campaign to win her parole that is echoed by the efforts of Ms. Clark’s supporters to win her a new trial, Ms. Boudin emerged from prison, clutching a bouquet of dried roses that had been brought to her from her mother’s funeral a decade earlier.

While the ruling last month has given hope to Ms. Clark’s supporters, it has aroused a welter of emotions in Rockland County, especially among those in law enforcement.

Chief Van Cura was a 21-year-old officer when his two colleagues and the Brink’s guard were killed.

“I knew these guys personally, and they’ve all missed birthdays and graduations and weddings,” he said. “It’s a very difficult thing. The officers were carrying revolvers and these guys were shooting at them with M-16’s and semiautomatic pistols. It changed the character and makeup of the community.”

In a letter that Ms. Clark wrote in March to her supporters, she talked about the victims and their families. In recalling her father, who died after she was imprisoned, she wrote: “Filled with a sense of his importance in my life and the void left by his death, I understood more deeply than ever the incalculable loss suffered by the nine children who had been deprived of their fathers as a result of my crime.”

Mr. Friedman said the judge at Ms. Clark’s trial should have appointed standby counsel, especially since Ms. Clark, representing herself, had boycotted some proceedings.

“She walked out,” Mr. Friedman said. “She has a right to counsel, and we don’t have trials where there’s no one in the courtroom when the prosecution puts on its case. Even with Saddam Hussein, there has to be a lawyer in the court.”

In her recent decision, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan said that Ms. Clark “was without assistance of counsel for her defense, in clear abrogation of her Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”

In reversing the conviction, she ordered the state to conduct a new trial within 90 days or release Ms. Clark.

Judge Scheindlin’s decision could open a window for another participant in the Brink’s holdup. Like Ms. Clark, David Gilbert represented himself at trial and boycotted some of the proceedings. He is serving a sentence of 75 years to life at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

Susan Tipograph, Mr. Gilbert’s lawyer and originally Ms. Clark’s as well, said she had sent him a copy of Judge Scheindlin’s decision but had not heard back from him. Mr. Gilbert married Ms. Boudin at the time of his conviction, but they have since divorced.

In an open letter in March that appealed for public support, Ms. Clark’s daughter, Harriet, described a collection of poems that her mother had written for her in prison. The collection “points to the conversations my mom and I have built our relationship and our lives around,” Harriet Clark wrote.

“It opens with the poem ‘Why’ and begins, ‘Because I could not live in the world as it was, because I did not want to be what I was born for,’ ” the daughter wrote. “And through the poem, my mom winds her way to answer me in the final sentence, ‘Because I felt weak and afraid and wanted to dare courage into me.’ ”

    New Trial for Woman in 1981 Brink’s Case Is Reopening Old Wounds, NYT, 1.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/nyregion/01brinks.html