Senator Stevens to go free.

[Ramo]

No more than you can My parents are attorneys, one a prosecutor, one not; both complain quite frequently about misconduct on the other side, of course, but the problem is that the defense gets away with it because there aren't really any penalties for it unless it's bad enough to get someone disbarred. If a defense attorney doesn't do something he's supposed to, a not guilty verdict doesn't get overturned, after all. They (generally) don't even report to anyone that would meaningfully discipline them... and the attorneys who are best at it, get more clients, because they get a name for doing whatever it takes to get you off.

Prosecutorial misconduct, on the other hand, not only is significantly punished [at minimum, stuff like this, where the case is reversed; and the attorney, being an employee of the state, could easily lose his/her job], but is investigated by the same state that you would blame for abusing its power. Attorney generals (and even district attorneys) aggressively investigate prosecutorial misconduct. It's found and cut out wherever they can; there's a reason that after ONE charge of misconduct, this attorney left and went clear across the country, presumably to somewhere that they hadn't heard of the misconduct charge...

Fair points, but you'd need a very large bias against prosecutorial misconduct in order to correct for the levers of power that the state has. I doubt that exists.

[Lefty Scaevola]

What I'm curious about is why a Bush prosecutor did this.

She is a career prosecutor, up through the ranks over 18 years, not a recent political appointee.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Fair points, but you'd need a very large bias against prosecutorial misconduct in order to correct for the levers of power that the state has. I doubt that exists.

Actual, rather than theoretical, enforcement against prosecutorial abuse is rare and far too little to create any deterrence.

[SpencerH]

for Stevens

Convenient for Stevens? Have you been partaking even at this early hour? He lost his senate seat over a (probably) bogus indictment.

[Berzerker]

yes, the case will be dropped without a conviction on the books

if you gotta crook you wanna let off the hook and you cant corrupt the judge or jury, corrupt the prosecution.

[Lefty Scaevola]

One (of serveral) part of the withheld evidence and alleged cooked testismony goes direcly to the heart of the case: the existence of a gratuity.

"At trial, the government claimed that the improvements cost $250,000; Mr. Stevens apparently paid $130,000. The Justice Department now acknowledges that Mr. Allen told the government on April 15, 2008 that the improvements cost Mr. Allen only $80,000. This information was not turned over to Mr. Stevens' defense team until last week. Now his lawyers now claim that Mr. Allen, the prosecution's key witness, "was subsequently 'pushed' to provide the false 'bombshell' testimony favorable to the prosecution."

If Stevens paid $130,000 for work that cost the contractor only $80,000, that ain't no bribe, more like the Senator paid too much.

[Berzerker]

what about the gifts?

[Lefty Scaevola]

AP:
"A judge has dismissed charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct and has ordered a criminal contempt investigation of the prosecutors.

"In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in the opening moments of a hearing.

Sullivan read a stinging summary of the many times the government withheld evidence or mishandled witnesses in the case."


My analysis: The main case was gutted on the facts, with the prosecutorial miscoduct leading toward false evidence and testimony. Some of the smaller unreported gifts charges MIGHT have stood on the facts but for the prosecutorial misconduct dismissal.

[Dinner]

We all know the ****er is guilty even if he did get off on a technicality.

[rah]

No doubt about some of the smaller gifts, but the big stuff, maybe not.
That's why we have a legal system.

[snoopy369]

We all know the ****er is guilty even if he did get off on a technicality.

I think you are being a typical liberal reactionary jerkwad here... The actual information we've seen posted seems to indicate he might not have been guilty of anything nearly on the level of what he was convicted of; and I suspect there are 99 other senators that could be tried on SOME sort of abuse of office charge. Power begets power, after all. But the serious charges he faced, he may well not have been guilty of.

[The Mad Monk]

On the other hand, who are we to stand in the way of a good lynching?

[SpencerH]

From the NYT

WASHINGTON — A federal judge dismissed the ethics conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska on Tuesday after taking the extraordinary step of naming a special prosecutor to investigate whether the government lawyers who ran the Stevens case should themselves be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, speaking in a slow and deliberate manner that failed to conceal his anger, said that in 25 years on the bench, he had “never seen mishandling and misconduct like what I have seen” by the Justice Department prosecutors who tried the Stevens case.

Judge Sullivan’s lacerating 14-minute speech, focusing on disclosures that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence in the case, virtually guaranteed reverberations beyond the morning’s dismissal of the verdict that helped end Mr. Stevens’s Senate career.

The judge, who was named to the Federal District Court here by President Bill Clinton, delivered a broad warning about what he said was a “troubling tendency” he had observed among prosecutors to stretch the boundaries of ethics restrictions and conceal evidence to win cases. He named Henry F. Schuelke 3rd, a prominent Washington lawyer, to investigate six career Justice Department prosecutors, including the chief and deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section, an elite unit charged with dealing with official corruption, to see if they should face criminal charges.

Only days after a jury last October found Mr. Stevens guilty on seven felony counts, he was narrowly defeated in his bid for re-election. Mr. Stevens had been the longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate.

The smile Mr. Stevens displayed during Tuesday’s court session would have been unfamiliar to those who have followed him in the Senate, where he had a reputation as being dour and grumpy.

In a brief statement, Mr. Stevens told the court that he had long maintained an unwavering faith in the judicial system. “But what some members of the prosecution team did nearly destroyed my faith,” he said. “Their conduct had consequences for me that they will never realize and can never be reversed.”

Mr. Stevens was charged with failing to list on Senate disclosure forms some $250,000 worth of goods and services he received, mostly to transform a modest chalet he owned in Girdwood, Alaska, into a more splendid residence.

During the five-week trial, prosecutors were repeatedly forced to acknowledge that they had failed to turn over information to defense lawyers as required. “Again and again, both during and after the trial in this case, the government was caught making false representations and not meeting its discovery obligations,” Judge Sullivan said Tuesday.

A 1963 Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland, requires prosecutors to give a defendant all information they hold that might materially help the defense.

The Stevens case finally collapsed last Wednesday, more than five months after the verdict, when Eric H. Holder Jr., the recently installed attorney general, asked that all charges be dismissed because the new lawyers whom he had put in charge of the case had discovered yet another example of concealment.

During the trial, defense lawyers argued that Mr. Stevens had written a letter to Bill Allen, a onetime friend and the owner of a huge oil services company, asking for a bill for all the goods and services that Mr. Allen had provided. Mr. Allen, the chief prosecution witness, discredited that letter, testifying that he had been told by Bob Persons, an emissary from Mr. Stevens, to ignore the letter because the senator was just seeking to provide a false record to protect himself.

But recently discovered notes showed that prosecutors who interviewed Mr. Allen on April 15, 2008, heard him say that he did not remember any such conversation with Mr. Persons.

Mr. Stevens’s defense lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, told the court Tuesday that he had been blindsided by Mr. Allen’s testimony about the letter. “It was the most explosive testimony in the case,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Mr. Sullivan said that had he known of the prosecutors’ notes, he would have been able to argue that Mr. Allen’s account of the conversation with Mr. Persons was fabricated.

Paul O’Brien, chief of the new prosecution team that discovered the latest impropriety by the original prosecutors, said in court that “we deeply regret that this has occurred.”

Judge Sullivan named six prosecutors as the subject of Mr. Schuelke’s investigation, including William M. Welch II, who heads the public integrity unit, and his deputy, Brenda K. Morris. Justice Department officials said the prosecutors remained at work on Tuesday.

The other lawyers are Joseph W. Bottini, James A. Goeke, Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan. None of them were in the courtroom Tuesday except as presences to be repeatedly flayed by the judge and Brendan Sullivan.

Judge Sullivan also criticized Michael B. Mukasey, the last attorney general in the Bush administration, saying it was shocking that he had failed to respond to letters from the defense team complaining about the Stevens prosecution. Mr. Mukasey’s office would not comment.

Judge Sullivan previously served on the District of Columbia Superior Court, the equivalent of a state court, to which he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

Like other judges on the Federal District Court in the nation’s capital, he has ruled on cases involving the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other issues of federal policy. He is now hearing a case that he will decide without a jury: the contention of animal rights advocates that the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus mistreats its elephants.

Michael Madigan, an experienced former prosecutor with the Orrick law firm in Washington, said Judge Sullivan’s decision to name his own prosecutor was highly unusual but was explicitly provided for in the rules of federal procedure. Under the rules, Mr. Madigan said, a judge may choose his own prosecutor for contempt investigations.

Mr. Madigan said Mr. Schuelke would “operate under the authority of the court.”

“He will then recommend to the court whether to seek criminal contempt charges,” Mr. Madigan said.

David Johnston contributed reporting.

Given the likely effect of this witch-hunt on the election results, I think the senate seat should be "recalled" by the people of Alaska and a new election should take place.

[TCO]

Poor writing:

1. "None of them were in the courtroom Tuesday except as presences to be repeatedly flayed by the judge and Brendan Sullivan." Huh? Were they there silently? Purple prose. Uck.

2. Early in the story, it's mentioned that Sullivan was appointed by Bill Clinton to the court. But later on we find a longer bio and that he was initially appointed to the judiciary (in general, not that specific court) by Reagan. The earlier Clinton mention is confusing, not really relevant and should be in the same section where we get the overall backround of the judge.

[TCO]

Given the likely effect of this witch-hunt on the election results, I think the senate seat should be "recalled" by the people of Alaska and a new election should take place.

I don't. He was a RINO porker anyhow. I want to gut the party of RINOs. I'd rather have a solid minority and be able to articulate things that resonate with the people (anti-bailout) than have a majority and just pork like a K street lobbyist whore as in the Bush Admin.