What Happened to Bill Allen in the Ted Stevens Case
Then-Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, in 2008. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
And so-Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, in 2008.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
An extraordinary special investigation by a federal estimate has concluded that two Justice Section prosecutors intentionally hid evidence in the instance confronting Sen. Ted Stevens, 1 of the biggest political abuse cases in recent history.
A blistering report released Thursday establish that the government squad curtained documents that would take helped the late Stevens, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, defend himself against false-statements charges in 2008. Stevens lost his Senate seat every bit the scandal played out, and he died in a airplane crash two years later.
The 500-folio report by investigator Henry F. Schuelke III shook the legal community, as police professors described it every bit a milestone in the history of prosecutorial misconduct.
Investigators weren't talking Thursday. But Brendan Sullivan, who defended the senator, had plenty to say.
"The extent of the abuse is shocking," Sullivan says. "Information technology'due south the worst misconduct nosotros've seen in a generation by prosecutors at the Department of Justice."
Failings Detailed
The written report is based on a review of 128,000 documents and interviews with prosecutors and FBI agents on the hot seat.
It details critical failings by the government every bit information technology raced to get ready for the 2008 trial: disheveled files; cardinal meetings at which FBI agents never took notes; insufficient management by supervisors at the Justice Department's criminal sectionalisation; and pained egos that led resentful members of the prosecution squad to finish talking to each other in the weeks before the case went to a Washington, D.C., jury.
For case, the report says the Justice team argued to the jury that Stevens, who served the country of Alaska for 40 years, accustomed pricey renovations to his Alaska chalet from oil services company executive Neb Allen.
Prosecutors argued that the senator didn't disclose the full value of the souvenir on his congressional disclosure forms. In that location was a trouble with that, though, defence chaser Sullivan says: "Sen. Stevens had a handwritten note to Nib Allen requesting that Pecker Allen transport him a bill. It was the middle of the defense because the notation said, 'Send me a bill. Nosotros have to do this ethically,' " Sullivan recalls.
Merely prosecutors reasoned that the senator was simply trying to cover his tracks, and they failed to turn over statements from a renovation foreman, Rocky Williams, who might well have supported the senator's account. They went on to present estimates virtually the price of renovations that were wildly overblown, the written report said.
The regime team as well left the jury with a mistaken impression that Allen had been telling government all along that Stevens had cooked up a cover story about wanting to pay all the bills. But in fact, the report says, Allen didn't mention that in 55 previous interviews with prosecutors and the FBI — only coming upwardly with the account that helped the Justice Department on the eve of trial.
Finally, the report says, prosecutors should have shared information that might accept obliterated Allen's brownie: an explosive allegation that Allen had a sexual human relationship with a fifteen-twelvemonth-onetime girl and and so asked her to lie about it under oath.
'Not Virtually Mistakes'
"It is incredible that in such an incredibly high-contour case, where a sitting United States senator is being prosecuted under the spotlight of the earth with cameras watching and a top-notch defense force squad, that these kinds of egregious Brady violations could occur," says American University law professor Cynthia Jones.
Jones is referring to Brady v. Maryland, a landmark Supreme Court example that instructed prosecutors to turn over evidence that would favor criminal defendants. The squad prosecuting Stevens likewise ran afoul of another long-standing Supreme Court precedent in the instance of Giglio five. United States. In the Giglio instance, the high court said prosecutors needed to share evidence that would help defendants impeach the credibility of regime witnesses.
Anybody seems to hold the Stevens prosecution was infected with errors. The study blames higher-ups in the criminal division of the Bush Justice Section, Matt Friedrich and Rita Glavin, for failing to supervise the instance. Friedrich didn't respond to requests for comment by e-mail Thursday afternoon. Glavin said she didn't have access to the study or filings until Thursday and planned to comment in one case she had a risk to read through the material.
Merely lawyers for the lower-level Alaska prosecutors singled out Thursday — Joseph Bottini and James Goeke — said investigators had been unfair.
"The people who should exist investigated and held responsible for the mistakes fabricated in this case were the and so upper management in the Department of Justice who, for political reasons, rushed this case to trial before the prosecution was prepared to endeavour it," says Matthew Menchel, a lawyer for Goeke. "It was this conclusion ... that made information technology a fait accompli that the mistakes of the kind outlined in the Schuelke written report would happen. Jim Goeke should not be made a scapegoat for issues that were caused past the upper echelon of the Section of Justice."
Defence attorney Ken Wainstein spoke out on behalf of Bottini, who has been a prosecutor for 27 years.
"The special prosecutor in this case looked at the mistakes that were made and, without whatsoever show and without any legal support, merely concluded those mistakes were intentional misconduct," Wainstein says.
"This is not well-nigh mistakes," countered Sullivan, Stevens' defense lawyer. "This is non well-nigh negligence. This is not about incompetence. This is near intentional wrongdoing," he told reporters.
Stevens' former colleague in the U.S. Senate. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, introduced legislation Th that would make articulate that prosecutors are required to plow over evidence that would help criminal defendants.
Their bill won immediate support from the American Civil Liberties Spousal relationship, the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers, the nonpartisan Constitution Project, and a past president of the American Bar Association.
Lasting Effects
The aftermath of the Stevens case has taken a toll on nearly everyone connected with it.
A young Justice Department lawyer who spent years prosecuting Alaska corruption, Nicholas Marsh, committed suicide at his dwelling in September 2010 every bit the investigation continued. The report expressed "no decision as to his behave," given his untimely decease. Robert Luskin, an attorney for Marsh, said "he tried to do the right thing."
"Nosotros reject the contrary implications in the Schuelke report, which, like the very bear that it purports to criticize, was the product of a well-intentioned, just ultimately misguided process," Luskin said.
Brenda Morris and William Welch, who held leadership posts in the public integrity unit that prosecuted Stevens, were reassigned to other jobs in the Justice Department. The report fabricated no misconduct findings nigh them — a fact their lawyers highlighted. Morris wrote a letter for the record that concluded, "I trust that I can continue my legal career without further speculation as to my ethics or professionalism."
Meanwhile, Edward Sullivan, a junior fellow member of the Stevens trial team, is at present prosecuting abuse cases again. The study says he "deferred to the judgment of his superiors and made no contained decisions" when information technology came to turning over show to the defense. His lawyer says Sullivan has been "exonerated."
Attorney General Eric Holder, who abased the Stevens case in Apr 2009 after uncovering new and "disturbing" details about the prosecution, told lawmakers last week that the Justice Department had imposed sweeping new grooming courses on thousands of federal prosecutors to remind them of their legal obligations. He said the department has almost completed its own ethics review into the debacle and that he hoped to make much of that review public later this year.
And Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who leads the Judiciary Committee, said he would enquire Schuelke, who led the special investigation, to testify at a hearing earlier the Senate breaks in Apr — guaranteeing that the issues won't become away anytime presently.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2012/03/15/148687717/report-prosecutors-hid-evidence-in-ted-stevens-case
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