A US judge is deciding today on whether to uphold a twenty-eight-month prison term for the civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart or sentence her to thirty years. Stewart was found guilty in 2005 of distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh.” Prosecutors had sought a thirty-year sentence, but Stewart was sentenced to two-and-a-half years after the judge rejected the prosecutors’ argument that she threatened national security and ruled there was no evidence her actions caused any harm. But in November, a three-judge appeals court panel ordered the trial judge to review the sentence, calling it “strikingly low.” On the eve of the new sentencing, hundreds of people rallied near the federal courthouse in Manhattan in a show of support for Stewart. Stewart’s daughter, Brenna Stewart, said her mother is being targeted for her political involvement.

Brenna Stewart: “She faces the possibility of thirty years. And it’s never been heard of for an upper court to tell a lower court, 'Resentence.' It’s just amazing how they are targeting her because of the unpopular clients that she represented in her lifetime. She has fifty years of representing everybody and is repaid by being put in jail.”