Statement of Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman

Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP
Attorneys for Jonathan Pollard

For Immediate Release: July 22, 2005

FROM:
CURTIS, MALLET-PREVOST, COLT & MOSLE LLP
101 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10178

We are deeply disappointed at today's ruling by the Court of Appeals in the Jonathan Pollard case, denying Mr. Pollard's appeal from the rulings of the lower court that had (a) denied, purely on procedural grounds, his motion to vacate his life sentence; and (b) had refused to allow his security-cleared attorneys access to the classified portions of the court's sentencing docket.

As with the lower court's rulings, this ruling is largely procedural and does not address the appropriateness of the life sentence.

In a split aspect of the decision, two members of the three-judge panel held that the courts have no jurisdiction to allow access to the court docket materials in this case. In a ten-page dissent, Judge Judith Rogers held that there plainly is such jurisdiction, as the Government had conceded.

In 1992, Judge Stephen Williams of the very same Court of Appeals called Mr. Pollard's life sentence "a fundamental miscarriage of justice requiring relief . . ." That relief was not granted today.

We are evaluating our procedural options to determine the next step in our efforts to obtain justice for Jonathan Pollard.