Lynne Stewart
Lynne Stewart
Lynne Irene Stewartis an American former attorney who was known for representing controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants. She was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred. She was convicted of helping pass messages from her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric convicted of planning terror attacks, to his followers in al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an organization designated as...
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth14 December 1946
I'm very shook up, and surprised, and disappointed that the jury didn't see what we saw,
Archie was always the spokesman for the Stewart family. But he's not the namesake.
I've been doing this work for 30 years, and I am well aware of the bright line and I have never stepped over it, and I certainly didn't do it in this case either.
I'm a lawyer. I fight for my clients. that's what my job is, ... I'm going to continue to be a lawyer, hopefully, until they carry me out. But I sincerely hope it isn't the government that does the carrying.
The bright line says the lawyer doesn't become part of the criminal enterprise, whatever that enterprise may be,
It certainly is a great relief, ... It's also wonderful to know that the case maybe has opened a way for the use of this (1996) law to be circumscribed, curtailed a little bit.
It's one of the real sacred precincts of the law -- that your client should be absolutely free to tell you whatever he needs to tell to you, and you should be free to give whatever advice you need to give.
I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.
You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.
Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.
I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.
I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.
If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.
My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.