giving lawyers a bad (worse?) name

"She thought she could blow off the rules that apply to everyone else because she's a lawyer," said Anthony Barkow, the assistant United States attorney who made the government's final argument to the jury.

she broke the law and then defended herself by talking about civil liberties...

There was little dispute about the central facts in the case. After Mr. Abdel Rahman was sentenced in 1996 to life in prison, his followers issued a series of threats against the United States demanding his release. Prosecutors imposed rules, known as special administrative measures, that barred the sheik, already held in solitary confinement, from communicating with anyone outside prison but his lawyers and his wife.

Ms. Stewart repeatedly signed documents in which she agreed to uphold the rules.

She brought a letter containing messages from Islamic Group members to a meeting with the sheik in the prison in Rochester, Minn., in May 2000. She received a statement from the sheik and on June 14 called a reporter in Cairo and read him the statement. The sheik said he was withdrawing support for a cease-fire the Islamic Group had observed for three years in Egypt. The group never canceled the cease-fire.

Testifying on her own behalf, Ms. Stewart said the press release was part of a legal strategy that involved provoking the government if necessary in order to keep the sheik in the public eye. Ms. Stewart said she was acting within an unwritten lawyer's "bubble" in the prison rules that allowed her to defend her client as she thought best.

there is no rule that i'm aware of that says that you can break the law because you don't agree with it. David - care to comment?