Cruel and Unusual By Definition

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

11 December 13

American public policy requires cancer patient (Lynne Stewart) to die in prison

hink about it: the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment requires that murderers, terrorists, pedophiles all get "to have the assistance of counsel for [their] defense." It was, apparently, beyond the ken of the Constitution's framers to believe that defense counsel might also need protection.

But that's a question that current American public policy - or perhaps more aptly, American public pathology - raises in the case of Lynne Stewart, the 73-year-old woman whom the Obama administration has chosen to allow to die slowly in prison from metastasizing breast cancer, rather than grant a compassionate release for which she applied months ago.

Stewart is in prison basically because she provided constitutionally-mandated assistance to the blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Despite her representation, he was convicted of terrorist activities and remains in jail, but no grateful nation gives Stewart thanks for the result. Instead, the Bush administration, in full post-9/11 panic, subjected her to a political prosecution that lasted years and achieved conviction essentially because she had followed pre-9/11 court procedures with regard to client-counsel communication that had secretly become illegal. A clever lawyer or judge could have - and several actually did - make a more complicated case about her behavior, but when an appeals court that included a Bush cousin ordered the lower court to give her a longer sentence based on no new evidence, the punitive abuse of the justice system was apparent to anyone willing to see it.

In effect, the U.S. is now seeking the death penalty for thought crime

Her husband, Ralph Poynter, has sent out an email in support of her petition, "Help Bring Me Home for the Holidays." Her doctors have said she has maybe a year to live now, but the Bureau of Prisons and the rest of the Obama administration remain unmoved. "I need to ask once again for your assistance in forcing the Bureau of Prisons to grant my Compassionate Release. They have been stonewalling since August and my life expectancy, as per my cancer doctor, is down to 12 months. They know that I am fully qualified and that over 40,000 people have signed on to force them to do the right thing, which is to let me go home to my family and to receive advanced care in New York City. Yet they refuse to act," Stewart wrote in early December from her cell at Carswell prison in Fort Worth, Texas.

Americans sentenced to die in prison for capriciously insubstantial "crimes" is an outcome all too common in a country filled with for-profit prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has published "A Living Death," which documents this unconstitutional practice by federal and state justice systems.

The ACLU describes its 157-page study this way: "For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever come home to their parents and children. And taxpayers are spending billions to keep them behind bars."

Indefensible government behavior is not new news

In 2012, Human Rights Watch published "The Answer Is No" - a 128-page report that concluded that there is too little compassionate release in U.S. Federal prisons. Human Rights Watch summarized the report's contents:

"Congress authorized compassionate release because it realized that changed circumstances could make continued imprisonment senseless and inhumane, Human Rights Watch and FAMM said. But if the Bureau of Prisons refuses to bring prisoners' cases to the courts, judges cannot rule on whether release is warranted. Since 1992, the Bureau of Prisons has averaged annually only two dozen motions to the courts for early release, out of a prison population that now exceeds 218,000. The Bureau of Prisons does not keep records of the number of prisoners who seek compassionate release."

Ralph Poynter's appeal on behalf of his wife says: "The Report is definitive in exposing arbitrary and illegal conduct that infuses every facet of the treatment accorded Lynne Stewart."

And he quotes from the report: "… the Bureau has usurped the role of the courts. In fact, it is fair to say the jailers are acting as judges. Congress intended the sentencing judge, not the BOP to determine whether a prisoner should receive a sentence reduction."

According to Poynter, "The Federal Bureau Prisons has failed to file the legally required motion declaring solely that the matter is 'with the Department of Justice.'" Poynter and Stewart have asked their supporters to bring her situation to the attention of authorities who have the power to make a callous system respond more humanely, at least in this case:

• Charles E. Samuels Jr., Director Federal Bureau of Prisons

(202) 307-3250 or 3062; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


• Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Department of Justice

(202) 353-1555; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

They also suggest that supporters contact U.S. Embassies and Consulates in nations throughout the world.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.