Interestingly, the lawyer-client privilege was eroding even before 9/11:
Regarding Lynne Stewart and whether the issue in her trial is "lawyer-client privilege" and its erosion, or not.
There certainly are lawyer-client issues to be discussed where conversations between clients and their attorneys are monitored, even if the authority to do such monitoring applies to only 16 of the 158,000 inmates in the federal system and each prisoner is told in advance that such monitoring to prevent terrorism will be taking place and none of the information that is protected by attorney-client privilege can be used for prosecution.
But: This is what Lynne Stewart did, and why imo she will lose her case and deserves to lose it in spite of the mitigation that one may find in her being patently a pathetic idiot.
Before I summarize it, I'll mention that Sattar, who was with Stewart in the sheik's cell and had tried to communicate the sheik's wishes regarding ending a cease fire to the Islamic terrorist group unsuccessfully before Stewart did it successfully in her news conference, was turned down as a client by Ron Kuby. That's gotta tell you something.
Lynne Stewart was fully aware that as the terrorist sheik's attorney, she was allowed to speak for him on legal matters but not on political ones. She knew she was not allowed to pass messages to his followers, for example, messages telling them that it was his wishes that they end a cease fire with the Egyptian government and recommence violence.
We know she was fully aware that she wasn't allowed to do this because she is an attorney, and can assume she understood what she was signing when she signed a Special Administrative Measures agreement not to pass information to or from terrorist clients except for legal purposes.
But she did that, and more than that.
One of the charming things Stewart did was participate in a claim to the press that the sheik, a diabetic, was having his insulin withheld. That was a lie, as she knew.
Next I'll post a piece from the NYT Mag and a few links. |
