That was an absolutely vicious editorial about attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted recently in New York for supporting terrorism (“A radical attorney’s crime,” Editorial, Feb. 17). It puts the Tribune squarely on the side of those who would destroy the right to counsel when the defendant is unpopular, those who would eavesdrop and tape conversations between attorney and client, those who would put law-enforcement officers in the very room where attorney and client are conferring.
Members of the Bush administration created rules that they say allowed them to do all of those things. And not just to terrorists. Any federal prisoner, and his or her lawyer, is subject to precisely the same rules. No judge approved those rules. No legislature passed them into law.
The Ashcroft Justice Department decided to make the new rules the condition upon which Lynne Stewart could even see her client. When he gave her a statement for the press, she took the statement and gave it to the press. She didn’t surreptitiously pass it on to people who then engaged in terrorism. She didn’t espouse anything in the press release. She didn’t pass any secret codes or messages from her client to someone else. She gave the statement to reporters.
Ashcroft said that action violated his rules. None of those rules even existed before Ashcroft and the Bush administration. Stewart challenged those rules. Anyone interested in preserving the right of a lawyer to advocate for the client should challenge those rules. Test them in court. Ask a judge if those rules violate the 1st Amendment. If the new rules hold up, then we have to live with them. Violations of administrative regulations may subject the violator to administrative sanctions.
But prosecuting Stewart for materially supporting terrorism? Sending her to jail for doing what any self-respecting lawyer would do for his or her client? When did the Tribune decide that the attorney-client privilege and the 1st Amendment are two more freedoms that we can do without?
