I'll be short so you can discuss.
CNN
Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced Monday to 28 months in prison for helping a client, a blind sheik who plotted to blow up New York City landmarks, communicate with his followers.
Stewart, 67, could have faced up to 30 years in prison for her 2005 conviction on a federal charge of providing material support to terrorists.
She smiled as the judge announced his decision to send her to prison for less than 2-1/2 years.
"If you send her to prison, she's going to die. It's as simple as that," defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink had told the judge before the sentence was pronounced.
Stewart, who was treated last year for breast cancer, had released a statement by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheik sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted in plots to blow up five New York landmarks and assassinate Egypt's president.
Prosecutors have called the case a major victory in the war on terrorism. They said Stewart and other defendants carried messages between the sheik and senior members of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization, helping spread Abdel-Rahman's call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law.
In a letter to the judge before her hearing, Stewart proclaimed: "I am not a traitor."
"The end of my career truly is like a sword in my side," She said in court Monday. "Permit me to live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously."
She acknowledged that she zealously tried to save a blind Egyptian sheik from life in prison for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.
But she argued that the government's characterization of her was wrong and took unfair advantage of the "hysteria that followed 9/11 and that was re-lived during the trial.
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Don't know what to make as I haven't finished reading the article or looking around more for different insight into the opinion. Furthermore, I don't know what the implications might be from this case, what types of precedents this might set, how anythign might change, or what impact this type of ruling will have on future cases. I have no legal background so I can't help you there.
Thoughts?