Jonathan Pollard

Charlie,

You have got to make up your mind about Dina dimalchusa. In one comment, you treat as the be all and end all and in another you say “well….”.

Besides, it is likely that dina demalchusa relates to the country one “dwells” in. These boys certainly did not dwell in Japan.

And what happened to Y. W. Editor’s contention that 99.99% of what you said was factually incorrect based on specific research he has done. Apparently being a PhD does not mean one can do research beyond a google seacrh.

Actually, in both the case of Jonathan Pollard and the case of the Bochurim in Japan, there seemed to have been significant stupidity on the part of the defendants — in Pollard’s case thinking he could get a better sentence by building up media pressure, in violation of his agreement and against the desire of his lawyers, and in the Japan case by not realizing that deals too good to be true usually aren’t — but the punishment for stupidity is not life in prison.

I heard that obama is considering granting pollard clemency. any truth to this?

mos yumos, even if Pollard is granted clemency he is not going to leave jail of his own free will. What he wants is an apology from America and he is not going to get one. So until he gets it, he is staying put. This I heard from someone who is very close to the Pollard family. I am not making it up!

its such a disgrace that he’s still in jail. I saw someone who wrote that he thinks that obama yemachshemo is hoping he’ll just die already chas veshalom so that he can say they were actually going to free him but then he died first.

There wasn’t a lot of evidence against him.

How could you possibly know this?

If you’re not in the intelligence community, you could not possibly know the evidence that may or may not exist against Mr. Pollard.

And if you are in the intelligence community (with knowledge of the case), you’re a fool for posting about it here on a public message board.

The Wolf

@Health

Try reading the official court documents, not the articles in the media. You might learn something

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. – 959 F.2d 1011

Argued Sept. 10, 1991.Decided March 20, 1992.Order Amending Opinion May 28, 1992

http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/959/1011/220032/

Here is a soundbite:

9

Pollard had, in the meantime, begun plea discussions with the government. He sought to plead guilty both to minimize his chances of receiving a life sentence and to enable Anne Pollard to plead as well, which the government was otherwise unwilling to let her do. The government, however, was prepared to offer Pollard a plea agreement only after Pollard consented to assist the government in its damage assessment and submitted to polygraph examinations and interviews with FBI agents and Department of Justice attorneys. Accordingly, over a period of several months, Pollard cooperated with the government investigation, and in late May of 1986, the government offered him a plea agreement, which he accepted.

10

11

In return for Pollard’s plea, the government promised not to charge him with additional crimes, entered into a plea agreement with Anne Pollard, and made several specific representations that are very much at issue in this case. The critical provisions are paragraphs 4(a) and 4(b) of the agreement, in which the government “agree[d] as follows”:

12

(a) When [Pollard] appears before the Court for sentencing for the offense to which he has agreed to plead guilty, the Government will bring to the Court’s attention [295 U.S.App.D.C. 13] the nature, extent and value of his cooperation and testimony. Because of the classified nature of the information Mr. Pollard has provided to the Government, it is understood that particular representations concerning his cooperation may have to be made to the Court in camera. In general, however, the Government has agreed to represent that the information Mr. Pollard has provided is of considerable value to the Government’s damage assessment analysis, its investigation of this criminal case, and the enforcement of the espionage laws.

13

(b) Notwithstanding Mr. Pollard’s cooperation, at the time of sentencing the Government will recommend that the Court impose a sentence of a substantial period of incarceration and a monetary fine. The Government retains full right of allocution at all times concerning the facts and circumstances of the offenses committed by Mr. Pollard, and will be free to correct any misstatements of fact at the time of sentencing, including representations of the defendant and his counsel in regard to the nature and extent of Mr. Pollard’s cooperation. Moreover, Mr. Pollard understands that, while the Court may take his cooperation into account in determining whether or not to impose a sentence of life imprisonment, this agreement cannot and does not limit the court’s discretion to impose the maximum sentence.

14

The district court accepted Pollard’s plea at a hearing held on June 4, 1986. Chief Judge Robinson addressed Pollard in open court and questioned him about his understanding of the rights he was surrendering, including the potential sentences he faced and the terms of the plea agreement. After being assured by both Pollard and his attorney that there was no reason to be chary of the plea, the district court accepted it.

15

Sentencing took place nine months later. Both the government and Pollard submitted extensive pre-sentencing memoranda to the district judge. In general, the government argued that Pollard had done grievous damage to U.S. national security interests in the pursuit of financial reward and that Pollard was unremorseful and a continuing danger to national security. The government mentioned that Pollard had violated his plea agreement while in prison awaiting sentencing by giving several interviews to a journalist for the Jerusalem Post, Wolf Blitzer, without first submitting his comments to the Director of Naval Intelligence. This again, according to the government, demonstrated that Pollard could not be trusted to refrain from disclosing the various national secrets in his possession and that he still considered himself the best judge of when to follow rules that had been imposed upon him. In addition to its principal sentencing memoranda urging the district court to impose a substantial sentence, the government also submitted a highly classified declaration by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger cataloguing the damage Pollard had done and opining that the damage had been “substantial and irrevocable.” The day before sentencing took place, Secretary Weinberger submitted an unclassified supplemental declaration in response to Pollard’s submissions that stated, in a rather polemical tone, the Secretary’s contentions.

16

In response to the government’s submissions, Pollard argued that he had done little damage to national security because the information he had misappropriated had been delivered to one of the United States’ closest allies. He denied that he had been motivated by greed, instead claiming that he had sought to aid Israel because he believed that his aid to Israel would also benefit United States’ security interests. He stressed the extent and value of his cooperation and the sincerity of his contrition. And he emphasized the special hardships prison life would impose on him and the psychological and emotional deterioration he had experienced during confinement.

17

After hearing oral allocution, the district judge sentenced Pollard to life in prison [295 U.S.App.D.C. 14] and Mrs. Pollard to five years.2 Pollard did not appeal but made a timely Rule 35 motion seeking to have his sentence reduced on the ground that it was disproportionate to the sentences received by other spies whose espionage was arguably more damaging to United States’ interests. He repeated the arguments he had made at sentencing and maintained in particular that the district court had failed to take proper account of his cooperation. The district court denied the motion, and Pollard did not appeal.

Health,

By the way, please show me a case, any case, where the defendant violates his plea agreement after pleading guilty, after having the plea accepted by the court, prior to sentencing and the guilty plea gets erased as a result of this? I cant imagine this ever happening, but if there is such a case I’d love to learn about it.

@wolf

I was referring to Hanssen in regards to the supermax, not Pollard

Please reread my post

JayMatt -“@Health

Try reading the official court documents, not the articles in the media. You might learn something”

Look, I’m not a lawyer; but are you a lawyer or a law student?

I’m not going to repeat my comment to you I made before, but you definitely are showing bias towards the Gov.’s side. What makes you think I just read the articles in the media that you so hauntingly claim? Maybe you should read all the legal documents in his defense before you boldy claim that the Gov. is right and his punishment was just? Ya’know many Goyim have come out publically that this is an injustice and they don’t even have a Chiyuv to be Dan s/o L’caf Zecus.

From a former lawyer of Pollard’s:

“6. The Government’s Breach of the Plea Agreement:

You agree in your memorandum that there are “legitimate questions” regarding the government’s conduct at the time of sentencing in conjunction with its plea bargain. However, you selectively omit a full discussion of the issue and the pertinence of it to Mr. Pollard’s request for a commutation of his sentence.

The fact is that the government violated its plea bargain with Mr. Pollard in several fundamental respects. Nearly everyone who has examined the circumstances agrees with that conclusion. Indeed, this situation was severely questioned by the federal appellate court that reviewed Mr. Pollard’s sentence. Despite the government’s agreement in exchange for Mr. Pollard’s plea of guilty to temper its rhetoric at the tide of sentencing, not to seek a life sentence, and to point out that Pollard’s cooperation with the government had been valuable, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the government had engaged in “hard-nosed dealings,” Pollard v. United States, 939 F.2d 10110, 1030, cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 322 (1992), and that the government’s conduct was “problematic” and “troublesome.” Id. at 1026. Dissenting Judge Stephen Williams concluded that the government violated material terms of Mr. Pollard’s plea agreement, resulting in a “fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Id. at 1032. And the government’s forceful, bitter and antagonistic rhetoric produced the very life sentence it had agreed not to seek. Although the courts declined for technical reasons to set aside Mr. Pollard’s sentence, there are no such constraints on the President’s constitutional power to commute Mr. Pollard’s sentence and thereby to redress the injustice of a sentence of life in prison despite the government’s promise not to seek such a sentence.

NJCRAC’s characterization of the facts is revealing. It says that Pollard’s claim of a government breach of the plea bargain is “not entirely a myth”. This is a very peculiar choice of words to describe an audacious, deliberate and manifest injustice.”

It’s funny that you’re calling me a fool

Well, to be honest, I only called you a fool if you were in the intelligence community and posted about it, as it could be potentially damaging to your career. If you’re not (which is probably the case), then you don’t fit the condition of my statement (i.e. “If you’re in the intelligence community…”)

That being said, I don’t know that his defense team saw all the evidence — I’d imagine that there’s quite a bit of classified material there. And if they did see it, they are probably bound by legal law not to discuss it in public (possibly making them fools if they did).

The Wolf

@Health

Look, I’m not a lawyer; but are you a lawyer or a law student?

I’m not going to repeat my comment to you I made before, but you definitely are showing bias towards the Gov.’s side. What makes you think I just read the articles in the media that you so hauntingly claim? Maybe you should read all the legal documents in his defense before you boldy claim that the Gov. is right and his punishment was just? Ya’know many Goyim have come out publically that this is an injustice and they don’t even have a Chiyuv to be Dan s/o L’caf Zecus.

So you can call me an anti-semite but I am not allowed to defend myself. You must be treated l’kaf zechus, but you don’t treat that way. Nice

Let me get this straight, If I support your view then I am intelligent and all, but If I disagree with you then I am biased?

Maybe you should read all the legal documents in his defense before you boldy claim that the Gov. is right and his punishment was just?…

From a former lawyer of Pollard’s:

Lawyers are paid to see things their clients way. Yes, I saw this, and I read this, but if you read the end of my link you will notice something, should you care (which I dont think you do, you want to believe Pollard is innocent, and you dont want to be convinced otherwise.)

Pollard admitted guilt. He did so in open court. He had a lawyer present. When he pled he was told that the court need not accept the plea, even if the prosecution recommended a softer sentence. He accepted, he angered them, they backed out of their oral agreement to recommend a softer sentence (which the court was not obligated to give him).

That is my point. To deny this would be to deny the facts of this case. The case I mentioned earlier was from his 1992 appeal. It starts with the background, his appeal, and the reason for its denial. You don’t need to be a law student to understand it, just someone with basic understanding of English

NJCRAC’s characterization of the facts is revealing. It says that Pollard’s claim of a government breach of the plea bargain is “not entirely a myth”.

I never said it was a myth. You claim the breach should have triggered a trial. I am telling you that you are wrong, and I showed you from his initial guilty plea that he very well knew that the court could accept his plea and ignore any recommendations from the gov’t

For the record, I don’t want him in jail. I believe he is and has been treated unfairly and his lawyers did him no favors. As to why he has never filed a parole request, which he can do, I have no idea. But it bothers me when people who try to defend him/help him don’t know the facts in the case.

But since you just see that there is a yid who disagrees with you, he must be a self hating antisemite who wants yidden to suffer, oh, and he is never dan l’kaf zechus.

Such a chillul Hashem. If all he did was give secrets to Israel, I would have been OK with it. But he sold the secrets, gave his then-wife other secrets to get an advantage in business, tried to sell them to Pakistan, and then went on Wolf Blitzer in direct violation of his parole. I honestly don’t understand why the frum oilom has such a thing for defending him.

“I honestly don’t understand why the frum oilom has such a thing for defending him.”
pidyon shavuyim is a “thing” in Halacha. Reading details of a case in several media sources and then pretending we know the full story and then judging the person and acting negatively toward them based on that is an issur.

Does that answer your question?

“pidyon shavuyim is a “thing” in Halacha. Reading details of a case in several media sources and then pretending we know the full story and then judging the person and acting negatively toward them based on that is an issur.”

In which case we should all similarly be fighting for the pidyon shavuyim of Nechemya Weberman. And certainly not badmouthing him.

Assinine comparison