bush's assault on the bill of rts

From Press Conference in Boston, 2/17/05
Statement by Michael Avery, President, National Lawyers Guild
(Michael Avery is a Constitutional Law professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston)

The National Lawyers Guild is outraged about the prosecution and conviction of Lynne Stewart and has called for a national day of outrage today to protest the prosecution. We are holding press conferences and protests in cities across the country, including Boston, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, OR, Bellingham, WA, Austin, TX, Miami, FL, Birmingham, AL, Durham, NC, Tucson, AZ and Washington, DC. We will be joined in other cities, as we are here in Boston, by other lawyers and activists who are concerned about the right to be represented by legal counsel.

We believe that Lynne Stewart was unfairly targeted by the Bush government in order to deter lawyers from representing politically unpopular clients, particularly individuals charged with terrorism-related crimes. Ms. Stewart was prosecuted on five felony charges and faces a possible twenty-year prison sentence, for violating administrative measures concerning the conditions of confinement of her client Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The evidence against her was that she openly gave to the press information that her client personally opposed a ceasefire in hostilities in Egypt in June, 2000. This action, which Ms. Stewart has never attempted to hide, should have been punished, if at all, with administrative sanctions, not a lengthy prison sentence. In fact, her actions should have been viewed as protected by constitutional principles, including the Sixth Amendment right of her client to counsel and the First Amendment right of freedom of speech.

The Bush government has attempted in a wide variety of ways to interfere with the rights of people in detention to be represented by lawyers and, even more ominously, has attempted to disrupt the constitutional process of checks and balances by cutting off access to the courts altogether in an increasingly large category of cases. These efforts by the executive branch of the government to operate outside the Constitution are detailed in a fact sheet which we have distributed with these remarks. The most well known of these measures are the claims of the government to be able to hold so-called “enemy combatants,” including American citizens, in indefinite detention, incommunicado, without access to lawyers, without making criminal charges against them. But the government has also asserted a right to secretly monitor attorney-client conversations of other prisoners; has sent some detainees to third countries, without any due process, where they have been tortured; and has refused to afford the protection of the Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war held by America. A number of the provisions of the Patriot Act, and other administrative measures, provide for secret searches, electronic surveillance, and the collection of personal information concerning American citizens and others lawfully in this country, all without access to adversary proceedings in court. Indeed, a federal judge in New York held last year that it could be considered a felony under the Patriot Act for a business person who receives a National Security Letter from the FBI, seeking information about a client, to consult with his attorney before responding to the request. On top of this we have trials against immigrants using “secret evidence” that neither the person, nor her attorney, have access to.

The fact is that the Bush government has waged a war on the Bill of Rights since the beginning of his first administration and plans to continue to do so. This effort to hijack our constitutional rights must be opposed by all Americans who care about civil liberties and our traditional freedoms. The members of the National Lawyers Guild will not be intimidated by the prosecution of Lynne Stewart and across the country today will publicly vow to continue to provide zealous advocacy to secure due process of law for all prisoners in detention and all people who are charged with crimes. In particular, we will continue to stand up for those who exercise their rights to oppose the policies of the government, and we will continue to support Lynne Stewart.