Lawyers for Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life in prison as a spy for Israel, have asked the Supreme Court to reopen his case.
Pollard is in the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina for selling military secrets to Israel while he worked at the Defense Department's Pentagon headquarters. A prison Web site says his projected release date under federal sentencing guidelines is Nov. 21, 2015. He was arrested in 1985 and convicted in 1987.
Pollard's appeal asks the Supreme Court justices to overrule a decision by a federal appeals court last summer that the court had no authority to review Pollard's request to see classified documents the administration of President Ronald Reagan submitted to the judge who sentenced Pollard in 1987.
Pollard's attorneys, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, said Thursday the information from the sentencing is needed to seek presidential clemency for Pollard.
The Israeli government denied for years that Pollard was its spy but finally acknowledged it in 1998 and has pressed for his release.
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