Media alert
I'm scheduled to appear on a short segment of Hannity & Colmes around 9:30 p.m. (EDT) this evening to discuss Lynne Stewart's placement on the faculty of Hofstra University Law School's "Lawyering at the Edge" legal ethics conference. My counterpart on the segment is Temple University hip-hop professor Marc Lamont Hill. As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not. I will declare victory if I am able to get a word in edgewise.
Stewart is the attorney who represented the blind sheikh convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Stewart herself was subsequently convicted of several counts of terror-related charges in the course of her represenation of the blind sheikh. She has since been disbarred. I wrote about her in "Face to face with Lynne Stewart" after I debated her on a panel addressing the PATRIOT Act here in Minneapolis while she was under indictment. She seemed to be having the time of her life, confident that a jury would never convict a grandmotherly woman who could pretend she was being prosecuted for her outré political views.
The Hofstra information on conference faculty omits a few facts; it merely describes Stewart as a "[h]igh profile radical and human rights attorney." Last year Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison for her crimes. She has pleaded to be spared from incarceration because of illness. My position is that she should be serving time rather than lecturing attorneys and law students on legal ethics (at least until she serves her time). And if the Hofstra audience wants to learn about the dangers of crossing the line to criminality on behalf of a terrorist client, or the difficulty of representing an unpopular client, it shouild invite John Ashcroft, the Attorney General who announced Stewart's indictment, or Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Dember, who prosecuted Stewart, to speak at the conference.
