Talk about justice being blind. This week, a United States district judge in New York dismissed charges filed by the federal government against the civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart for allegedly conspiring to support a terrorist organization. He did this because, he insists, the law prohibiting the conduct she is accused of is too vague. The judge, John G. Koeltl, left intact charges that Ms. Stewart and others conspired to defraud America and that Ms. Stewart made false statements. So Ms. Stewart isn’t entirely off the hook. But she was quoted by the Associated Press as saying she was “relieved and elated” by the dismissals. The lawyer for America, James Comey, said that prosecutors are reviewing its “appellate options.” We wish him luck.

The charges that were dismissed are no small matter. It was alleged that Ms. Stewart, an officer of the court, helped deliver messages from her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks and to assassinate President Mubarak. Prosecutors aver that Ms. Stewart and her co-defendants helped relay messages to the Islamic Group, a radical Egyptian-based terrorist faction. The accused allegedly conspired to provide communications equipment, personnel, currency, financial securities, and financial services. Judge Koeltl agreed with the defendants’ claim that, under the 1996 anti-terrorism statute, a defense attorney using a telephone to transmit messages on behalf of her terrorist client does not necessarily count as “providing communications equipment.”

The judge cited precedent from the Second Circuit that a criminal statute implicating First Amendment rights “must ‘define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.'” One has to wonder whether Judge Koeltl hasn’t taken the principle too far when an attorney acting as a courier between a convicted terrorist and operatives on the outside doesn’t count as someone who “provides material support of resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” which Section 2339B of the United States Code makes a crime. The best that can be said is that if such logic is not overturned or clarified on appeal, Congress will have justification to strengthen the law.

Ms. Stewart still faces charges of deceiving the government, which had imposed special administrative measures restricting the sheik’s access to mail, the telephone, and visitors and prohibiting him from speaking with the press. Ms. Stewart signed an affirmation to abide by these restrictions. Prosecutors have accused her of violating the promise during a May 2000 meeting. They charge she let a translator read letters from a U.S. Postal worker, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, and others regarding Islamic Group matters, such as whether the organization should comply with a cease-fire in Egypt. Prosecutors also say Ms. Stewart tried to conceal discussions from prison guards and violated the SAMs in June of 2000 by announcing to the press that the sheik had withdrawn his support for the cease-fire.

Ms. Stewart sought to avoid prosecution by arguing that the SAMs were unconstitutional, but Judge Koeltl had no sympathy for that. Ms. Stewart, he wrote, “is alleged to have signed the document knowing it to be false and now seeks to attack collaterally the Government’s authority…This strategy is foreclosed.” One of her partisans, Ron Kuby, a left-wing lawyer who once represented the sheik, was quoted by the AP as claiming he “believes that our own government can destroy our civil rights and freedom much faster than Al Qaeda ever could.” It’d be nice to see Mr. Comey challenge that mindset through an appeal to higher courts that have tended, in times of war, to credit not only the government’s constitutional authority but also its judgment.