2nd Circuit Judges Spar Over ‘Outlier’ Lenient Sentence for Lawyer Lynne Stewart
A New York-based federal appeals court has issued sparring opinions on the sentence meted out to lawyer Lynne Stewart, convicted for passing along messages from an imprisoned sheik convicted for plotting terrorism.
A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already told U.S. District Judge John Koeltl to reconsider the sentence for being too lenient, but that didn’t satisfy some judges who issued opinions dissenting from or concurring in the appeals court’s refusal to hear the case en banc. The Associated Press and the National Law Journal have the story.
Stewart, 70, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison; she faces up to 30 years at resentencing, AP says. Koeltl is a former member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors.
Judge Jose Cabranes said Koeltl had made “serious errors,” but the 2-1 panel decision identified the problems with only “winks and nods that it hopes the district court will understand and act on.”
The majority “either ignored or skimmed over at least five sentencing issues of paramount importance,” he wrote in an opinion joined by one other judge. He went on to append a chart outlining the issues addressed, the issues ignored, and those addressed only vaguely.
The sentence was an “outlier,” Cabranes said. “Punting in a case like this is not ‘judicial restraint,’ ” he added. “To refuse to decide issues that are squarely presented is an abdication of judicial responsibility.”
Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, joined two other judges, concurred in the en banc denial, but criticized the sentence. It would be “an institutional disservice” to delay the case even more with an en banc decision, he said.
Judge Rosemary Pooler didn’t see the need for all the opining. “This amounts to an exercise in free speech rather than an exercise of any judicial function,” she said.
