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http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=50634

1992 - The Forward

As the case of Jonathan Pollard winds its way through the appeals courts, it is becoming increasingly clear that at the bottom the outstanding issues are political. Not that we'd want to belittle the relevance of the work of
Pollard's lawyers or of the further appeal that may be made to the highest bench. But as the case has been winnowed by last week's opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it becomes clear that if any mistakes were made, they were not made by the judge who took Pollard's guilty plea and meted out his life sentence. There had been suggestions that the sentencing judge, Aubrey Robinson, was compromised because he had allegedly received out-of-channels information about the material Pollard sent to Israel. Supposedly the judge learned that some of the secrets Pollard passed to Israel referred to Israel's dealings with South Africa. Judge Robinson, as a black man, might have been particularly sensitive to such evidence. Such was the opinion of Arthur Goldberg, who talked with Judge Robinson, according to an affidavit of Alan Dershowitz. But this affidavit was not even credited by the one judge who sided with Pollard on appeal, Stephen Williams.

What Judge Williams does credit, in a noteworthy dissent, is the argument that the federal prosecutor violated the spirit, and on one key point even the letter, of the deal under which he got Pollard to give up his right to a trial and to plead guilty.


WSJ - 1991

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed court papers in 1987 that urged a stiff sentence for an American caught spying. "The magnitude of the treason committed," Mr. Weinberger wrote, was so serious that "no crime is more deserving of severe punishment." Guided by the defense secretary's statement that he could not "conceive of greater harm to national security," federal Judge Aubrey Robinson sentenced the spy to the maximum term - life imprisonment.

Three cheers for a judge tough on crime, but hold on. Mr. Weinberger's claim that Jonathan Pollard committed treason by spying for Israel was bad law or curious diplomacy. The capital offense of treason is one of the few crimes defined by the Constitution. "Treason against the U.S. shall consist only in levying war against them, or, in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."