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player ready...As he ordered a highly unusual criminal probe of the lawyers who prosecuted former Sen. Ted Stevens, a federal judge delivered a blistering rebuke Tuesday of the Justice Department’s actions in the case — and asserted that the department’s failures extend beyond its failure to give the longtime Alaska politician a fair trial.
In dismissing the public corruption case against Stevens, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington railed against a government agency that he said had committed unprecedented missteps in a feverish quest to secure the Republican senator’s conviction.
“In nearly 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case,” Sullivan told a packed courtroom.
Sullivan said he was launching his own criminal probe of the Justice Department’s actions in the case, tasking a private lawyer in Washington with investigating six lawyers from the department’s Public Integrity Section, and suggesting he could not trust the department to clean up the mess.
The department had already initiated its own internal probe, but the judge said the violations were instances of misconduct that were “too serious and too numerous” to be left to a Justice Department investigation that has “no outside accountability.” The lawyer appointed by Sullivan, Henry Schuelke, will submit a report to the court on whether members of the trial team should be held in criminal contempt. If not exonerated, they could be fired, disbarred or even jailed.
“It is a blow to have Sullivan say he doesn’t trust the Justice Department to do that work,” said Michael Bromwich, who served as the Justice Department’s inspector general during the Clinton administration. “That is a very significant black eye.”
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, in an interview on CBS television, said his department could investigate itself. He said the prosecutors will remain at the department for now.
The revelation that prosecutors withheld evidence from Stevens’ defense team came on the heels of a series of scandals that have plagued the agency in recent years, including allegations two years ago that the firing of several U.S. attorneys was politically motivated.
Bromwich said that the Stevens case, along with the U.S. attorneys scandal, will damage the credibility of prosecutors in federal courtrooms — which in turn will be exploited by defense lawyers.
“To have this on the heels of that — the people I feel sorry for are the line prosecutors across the country,” Bromwich said.
Sullivan linked the government’s actions in the Stevens case to its representations in court concerning detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. For weeks, Sullivan has been complaining that the Justice Department has withheld evidence concerning a Yemeni detainee whose case was before Sullivan until the Obama administration ordered his release last month.
“Whether you are a public official or a private citizen or a Guantanamo detainee,” Sullivan said, “the government has an obligation to produce exculpatory evidence so that justice can be done.” He asked Holder to retrain all federal prosecutors on their evidence-handling practices and called on his fellow federal judges to crack down on prosecutorial misconduct.
A jury found Stevens, 85, guilty on seven corruption counts in October, one week before Election Day; the senator lost his re-election bid for a seat he had held 40 years.
Stevens spoke briefly during the Tuesday hearing, thanking Alaskans for their support and saying that Sullivan’s actions had restored his faith in the rule of law.
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