charlie hall — It is true that the law does not differentiate between civilians and the military with regards to espionage — obviously the Rosenbergs were sentenced within the general guidelines of the law. However until that point sentencing judges DID differentiate, and greatly, between civilians and the military, and the Rosenberg case was a clear departure from precedent, even if it was not illegal.
But that is not really the point I was making — my point was that the sentence in a case, although up to the discretion of the judge within the legal guidelines, is primarily determined based on what the conviction is. (Someone convicted of manslaughter will not get the same sentence as one convicted of first degree murder, even though they both killed someone!) None of the examples you brought were of people who received a similar conviction as Pollard. As I said in my above post, Pollard’s conviction was for “passing classified information to an ally without the intent to harm the U.S.” There have been over 20 similar convictions in recent history, for countries including Saudi Arabia, China (for some reason considered an ally as far as the espionage act goes!), Great Britain, Liberia, South Korea, South Africa, Greece and many South American countries. No one ever received life in prison, and the next closest sentence is Lalas, as I mentioned above, who received 14 years despite having also broke his plea deal. So your reasoning that his disproportionate sentence is because he broke his plea deal is hard to believe. (And yes, I believe most judges would admit there is a difference between someone who breaks the plea deal by not giving over all of the information they were supposed to give (like Lalas), and someone who breaks a PR part of the deal, but even without that argument the Lalas case is a strong counter point.)
The examples you brought of the Walkers and Whitworth were of people who were convicted of espionage itself, as the Soviet Union between 1968 and 1985 (the years Walker ran his ring) was NOT legally considered an ally (this was the height of the Cold War!) There are many other outside factors that explain why these comparisons are invalid (Walker ran his ring for 18 years, and his plea bargain specifically did not request leniency for himself — he made a deal on behalf of his son, who received a sentence of 25 years of which he served 15. Whitworth did not enter into a plea deal at all), but they are not really necessary, as the contention of Polllard’s supporters that “nobody ever received such a harsh sentence for spying for an ally” is completely accurate. The examples you brought were of individuals convicted of spying for “unfriendly countries”, and therefore irrelevant to the above statement you are trying to disprove. (Although I don’t think any of the examples except the Rosenbergs received the conviction of “in times of war”, which is much more severe. I’m not sure about this particular point however.)
Again — Pollard is obviously guilty, as was Julius Rosenberg, and very possibly Ethel as well. The question is just one of fairness in sentencing, compared to what usually happens.
Also I strongly disagree with Health’s position that these individual cases mean the U.S. system is consistently anti-Semetic. However that doesn’t mean that any individual case is not (Health, your personal case may very well have been, I’m not addressing that). My personal opinion is that the Pollard case in particular is not so much an issue of anti-Semitism as much as a political game with Israel, but that’s a different story!