Attorney General Holder Urges Reversal of Steven's Conviction

Am I the only one who thinks that this is an important story?  It's not on the front page of the Washington Times site, or the USA Today site or, no kidding, the New York Times site.  It did appear on the USA Today print edition front page.  Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was convicted on a number of charges of corruption prior to his defeat in the recent election.  More charges were pending.  Now that the election is safely over, all charges have been dropped.  But it gets better.  From USA Today:

Legal analysts and lawmakers on Wednesday blasted prosecutors' conduct in the prosecution of former Alaska Republican senator Ted Stevens, while welcoming Attorney General Eric Holder's move to have the conviction thrown out.

It turns out that the team prosecuting Stevens withheld pertinent information from the Senator's lawyers.  That is flagrant prosecutorial misconduct.  You can read about it on the Washington Post Online, if you know to do a search. 

During the corruption trial of former Alaska senator  Ted Stevens, federal prosecutors were chastised by a judge for letting a witness leave town. They got in trouble for submitting erroneous evidence and were reprimanded for failing to turn over key witness statements. An FBI agent has since complained about the prosecution team's alleged misconduct.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had had enough. The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to drop the case after learning that prosecutors had failed to turn over notes that contradicted testimony from their key witness.

The discovery by a fresh team of lawyers and their acknowledgment that the material should have been shared with Stevens's defense team led Holder, a former public corruption prosecutor, to conclude that the department's biggest public corruption case in a decade could not be salvaged.

This seems to me to be front page news.  Even the conservative papers are ignoring it.  Maybe they don't want to remind everyone of what kind of guy Stevens was, and he weren't no saint.  But a conviction of a sitting Senator obtained by fraudulent tactics just in time to determine the outcome of an election, that's not just a crime against Ted Stevens, it is an offense to Republican government. 

All charges have been dropped against Stevens, and it looks like his conviction will be reversed.  Now: where doe he go to get his Senate seat back?

Comments

[connie conservative]

Well, the Dems got the outcome they wanted, so what the heck now. It is sickening, but when this happens people don't have a chance to get it righted. This from the poltiical party that likes to claim they are so ethical. This damage is done, the Dems got another seat, and why should Holder or the rest of them care now.

[caheidelberger]

Hold on -- the Dems got what they wanted? Weren't these federal prosecutors working for the Bush Administration? I agree with Dr. Blanchard's contention that prosecutorial misconduct that may have contributed to the unseating of a Senator is big news, but I need someone to connect the dots between the Dems and the prosecutors before I can accept cc's assertion that this is some "those darn Dems" issue.

[caheidelberger]

Says Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa):

“I think this [situation] says a lot about how bad the Justice Department got under President [George W.] Bush,” Harkin said during a conference call with reporters today. “It became a haven for ideological right-wingers for one thing, and it also became sort of a rogue institution with no supervision, no guidance [and] no direction.”

Perhaps the conservative papers have less to gain from this story than the other media. (By the way, NYTimes has a story up today.)

[caheidelberger]

Dang! Stripped my links:

Harkin: http://iowaindependent.com/13418/harkin-bush-administration-botched-stevens-case
NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03fri3.html

[Mac]

He's not going to get his senate seat back. You can't dismiss a sitting Senator unless he's done somthing illegal. We can't just go back because "we think" or "we feel" Stevens would have won if the investigation was supposedly clouding the outcome as has been alleged. Those are just feelings and you can't prove them. Courts don't rule on "feelings."

[KB]

Cory is certainly right that the Justice Department's conduct can't be blamed on the Democrats. But can you blame it on "ideological right-wingers" as Tom Harkin does? Why would a right-wing justice department go after a Republican Senator? There is clearly something rotten in Denmark, but it isn't easy to pin it on either side. Is this debacle Bush's fault? Well, what would have happened if Bush has put pressure on the prosecutors to get their act together? Cory and the New York Times would be screaming about how Bush was abusing his power to protect a Republican senate seat.

If I had to guess, I would guess it's part of a prosecutorial culture where the big prize is bringing down someone, anyone, of national importance. Every prosecuting attorney wants to be Elliot Spitzer (after he joined the club but before he got caught). Republicans have to take some share of the blame for this, as they too have urged special prosecutors at the drop of the hat over some ghost of a scandal. But at least Republicans have expressed skepticism about this trend.

Mac is certainly right that Stevens won't get his seat back, and for reasons that Mac mentions. But that doesn't make it any less a scandal. Stevens almost squeaked by anyway; without the indictment and conviction he would have been reelected. If it happened to someone on Mac's side, I am guessing Mac would be furious.

[Mac]

KB, I don't have a "side." That's why I left the Republican Party years ago and reregistered as an Independent. I will not join the Dems either. I'm an Independent forever. If the roles were reversed I would still assert the same position.

[Mac]

After all, to me: a sore loser is ALWAYS a sore "LOSER", whether it be Al Gore, Ted Stevens, or Norm Coleman. By the way, Coleman is forever finished as a politician, in Minnesota, anyway...

UPDATE: Norm you should have taken the advice of Senator John Thune when he chose to bow out of the 2002 Race and not make it into a flippin' legal battle for months after the election.

[connie conservative]

Why should Coleman bow out? There were major voting discrepancies in this election. More people voted in some districts than were registered. I have first hand knowledge of a ballot that was thrown out for a blatantly fictitious reason. There actually should have been a repeat election when it was so close with so many illegalities.

[caheidelberger]

KB, I don't think Sen. Harkin is blaming Stevens's downfall on a right-wing conspiracy -- indeed, that wouldn't make sense. Harkin may just be making what Mr. Epp might refer to as a karmic point: pick people for the Justice Department based on ideology rather than law enforcement competence, don't give them proper supervision, and you'll get boobery like this that ends up biting even your own party.

[KB]

Cory:

Senator Harkin was applying the simple logical rule that has been at the center of a lot of thinking on the left for years now: "if bad, then Bush."

The problem with your explanation is that it doesn't explain what happened. This wasn't a case of prosecutorial boobery: these guys knew exactly what they were doing. They withheld evidence from the defense because otherwise they couldn't have gotten a conviction. That's not boobery, it's malicious mischief. But it wasn't partisan mischief on the right or the left (unless there was a secret cabal of Obamanoids in the Justice Department).

So what was it? I think it's pretty clear that we have a Hollywood culture in among prosecutors. They want to bring down the biggest guys so they can go on Larry King and get their Emperor's Club VIP cards. This is a problem that President Obama should act to correct. Harkin's "blame it all on Bush" knee-jerk reaction only serves to conceal the real problem.