Lynne Stewart's appeal

Via Althouse, here's news of the appellate argument in Lynne Stewart's case.  As I understand it, there is a legitimate issue of about the required intent under the statute, but if any of the three appellate judges opines that what Stewart did in jail counts as "lawyering," then we will have taken a major step backwards in the law of lawyering.

Comments

[S.cotus]

Hopefully people will read the briefs before commenting.

[W.R. Chambers]

I've followed the case but not closely and not recently so if this question is displays my ignorance at least you know why: if she wasnt' lawyering, what was she doing? I assume she was in the jail because she was visiting her client. And if she went there as his lawyer, presumably she was meeting with him to do what lawyers do when they visit clients. If at some point she took off her lawyer hat and put on some other hat, how was anyone to know and what difference would it make?

[John Steele]

WR,

His case was "old and cold." There were no appeals left, etc. Now, meeting with the client to keep his spirits up counts as lawyering for me. So does disucssion of collateral attacks, etc. There was more than 1% of that stuff during the visits.

But the point of the visits was to secure the Sheikh's pronouncements on whether to continue to cease fire. (Remember: this was the group that literally disemboweled tourists at Luxor.) During the key passages of the visit, Stewart was working on other cases! She was "cover" so that the Sheikh could dictate in Arabic his letters. When the guards came to the door and peered in, she sprang into action to *pretend to be lawyering.* The transcripts are amazing. She had signed an agreement not to smuggle out messages but that was the entire point of the visit.

Any persuasive argument for her side of the lawyering isuse must begin like this: (1) yes, she actively participated in a ruse to smuggle letters in and out of prison for a client who had no legal matters pending. (2) yes the letters dealt with whehter a horrifically violent terrorist group should continue to abide by a ceasefire. (3) yes she had speficially agreed not to do the message smuggling. (4) nonetheless, this was "lawyering" such that criminal laws are powerless to reach her, because . . . .

I just don't think the argument can be made. Not by a long shot.