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September 5, 2003/Elul 8 5763, Vol. 55, No. 54
Pollard finally has day in court
EDWIN BLACK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - It didn't result in any decision, but just getting another day in court was a victory of sorts for Jonathan Pollard.
Sentenced to life im-prisonment in 1987 for spying for Israel, Pollard for years had tried to get a new hearing, arguing that his former counsel was inept and that the government broke a plea bargain agreement when it convinced the judge at his trial to give him a life sentence.
On Sept. 2, Pollard appeared in U.S. District Court in Washington, the first time he has been seen in public since his sentencing 16 years ago.
A packed courtroom heard Pollard's pro bono defense attorneys demand what they said was justice for the former Navy analyst, who confessed to passing military secrets to Israel.
Over and over again, attorney Jacques Sem-melman argued that Pollard's original attorney, Richard Hibey, had been guilty of ineffective assistance of counsel, thereby denying Pollard his right to a fair trial. Pollard already has served longer than any other spy similarly convicted.
Semmelman repeatedly reminded Judge Thomas Hogan that Hibey, without explanation, never object- ed to the government's breach of its written plea agreement not to ask for a life sentence; failed to ask for an evidentiary hearing regarding a last-minute, secret declaration by then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger outlining Pol-lard's allegedly extensive damage to U.S. interests; and failed to file the routine notice of appeal required within 10 days of the court proceedings.
Hibey has declined to discuss the case. Weinberger has admitted that his sworn declaration, in many ways the basis for Pollard's life sentence, "was made far bigger than its actual importance."
Hogan did not rule on the request for a reduction of Pollard's sentence or on his attorneys' request to be able to see the secret documents.
Wearing green leisure clothes and a beige knit yarmulke, Pollard was brought to the courtroom Sept. 2 without shackles and took a seat between Semmelman and his lead attorney, Eliot Lauer. His lawyers were backed up by two hired public relations managers, a contingent of rabbis led by former Israeli Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, Pollard's wife Esther and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).
Lauer appealed to the judge to allow Pollard's attorneys access to the secret doc-uments behind the Wein-berger declaration, which the government maintains are too secret for defense counsel to examine.
In a conversation with JTA, Weiner said he was the only member of Congress actually to examine the secret documents that have been denied to Pollard's current attorneys.
Weiner declined to characterize the documents or divulge their contents. He said he disagrees with both the public and secret portions of the Weinberger dec-laration.
"No case in American history has been treated so harshly," Weiner said. Pollard "should have never been sentenced to life."
That view was seconded by Jewish leaders.
"It's time for the president to release Pollard on human-itarian grounds," said Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations who was in the courtroom representing the conference's Pollard com-mittee. "Eighteen years is enough time."
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