** BREAKING: Special Prosecutor ordered in Ted Stevens Prosecution Misconduct

[L. Coyote]

Yet another Bush administration criminal inquiry!

====================
Judge orders misconduct probe in US senator's trial
Reuters India - ‎29 minutes ago‎ - http://in.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idINWAT01126820090407


WASHINGTON, April 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday angrily threw out a jury's corruption verdict against former Republican Senator Ted Stevens and ordered a criminal contempt probe into what he called "shocking" misconduct by the U.S. Justice Department.

U.S. District Judge Emmmet Sullivan said the Stevens prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, violating their duty to all cases whether they apply to "a public official, a private citizen or a Guantanamo-based detainee."

====================
Who Are the Lawyers in the Ted Stevens Trial?

Saturday, October 4, 2008 - http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2008/10/who-are-lawyers-in-ted-stevens-trial.html
Who Are the Lawyers in the Ted Stevens Trial? (Part One: The Prosecutors)
Live from the Ted Stevens Trial—October 4, 2008

Washington, D.C.--

This trial features two big and powerful teams of attorneys going at each other. The prosecutors are lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice. The defense team comes from Williams &
Connolly, probably the country’s leading law firm for white-collar criminal defense.

Let’s start with the prosecution; the defense comes tomorrow.

If there was a movie made about this trial, you’d have to say that of all the people involved, Brenda Morris is the one individual most likely to play herself. The trial’s lead prosecutor boasts a strong voice that belies her short stature.

Morris is a feisty woman who displays her aggressiveness to good effect. You wonder if—like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—she played high school basketball with an elbows-out style. Some of the best prosecutors in Alaska have had backgrounds as hard-nosed football or hockey players.

Morris is an African-American native of Washington, D.C .........

[spanone]

1. the question? did the bu$h* justice dept. knowingly fuck this up?

[redqueen]

5. Why else would they pack it with cronies?

I guess there's a slim chance they didn't. I doubt that's the case though.

[tekisui]

14. THe judge who ordered the criminal investigation of the

prosecutors said it was the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen.

I think it was intentional, and to be used as the reason to get Stevens off on appeal, but they went to far and are going to face prosecution themselves.

PULL THAT THREAD!

[L. Coyote]

21. So, anyone have the CBC office address in DC?

This certainly has the aroma of the Corrupt Bastards housed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the Department of Justice.

Those who pre-mediate crimes are at an advantage, especially if their profession is prosecution of crimes!
It will be much more difficult to show intention to save Stevens from a Slam Dunk life in prison conviction'
than to establish that the prosecutors were "just a bunch of nice people doing a poor job" of their work.

[tekisui]

22. If the 'misconduct' amounts to crimes, as the judge suggests,

I think they are cooked. The question will be how high up it went, whose idea it was. This has the familiar look of other bush crimes. Hubris combined with corruption.

Also, remember that some of Stevens' corruption was suggested to lead back to deals out of cheney's office. It could have been prosecutorial misconduct to protect the veep.

[L. Coyote]

24. Stevens actually spilled the beans on Cheney. There is a lot to look into about this case and

it is difficult to predict where it may lead given the mandate. It could lead to Bush.
We must not overlook the extent to which the Bush Junta was a conspiracy of Corrupt Bastards before they stole Florida 2000.
Who of all special interests are behind the CBC? Why, Big Oil, of course. That's where all this leads, including Siegelman!

Gov. Don Siegelman, the Roughly $3.6 Billion, ExxonMobil, and Pissing Off BIG OIL.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3070446

[formercia]

31. They got Stevens off.

so I guess it worked.

[TahitiNut]

34. GMTA ... it's far too serendipitous to be a coincidence.

The Cheney/Bush DoJ was demonstrably corrupt... and this is absolutely something they'd do. Ted Stevens is dirty. Filthy. Corrupt. A reversed verdict is the best he could have wished for.

[goclark]

2. I thought he got off??

[tekisui]

15. Stevens got off because the Bush cronies in the DoJ

broke the law in their prosecution. Now they will be criminally investigated themselves. Holder did good on this one!

[goclark]

36. You mean that all that Holder bashing around here

was not worthy?

:shrug:

I felt it was more in the way you described it.

[EOTE]

18. Stephens did. The prosecution who caused him to get off won't. NT

[Ian David]

3. I called it! I KNEW that PRESIDENT Obama would do this! n/t

[fascisthunter]

6. yes you did

[L. Coyote]

7. The trial judge did this. Presidents take care of executive decisions, not trials.

Obama has to try to get his Justce Department appointees into their chairs still!
Republicans are obstructing Obama in the department of Justice's functioning with new leadership.
That is the likely level of Obama involvement in Justice matters now, and that via his AG, Eric Holder.

[goclark]

35. Thanks for the clarity

It's appreciated.

[L. Coyote]

4. WA POST: Judge Tosses Out Stevens Conviction

Judge Tosses Out Stevens Conviction
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040700338.html
Del Quentin Wilber - Washington Post - April 7, 2009; 12:01 PM


A federal judge this morning tossed out the conviction of former senator Ted Stevens after the Justice Department admitted its prosecutors mishandled evidence in the corruption case. The judge also initiated a criminal contempt investigation of six prosecutors in the case.

"In 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct in this case," Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said. He called the allegations "shocking and disturbing."

Stevens (R-Alaska), who narrowly lost a reelection bid just eight days after being found guilty on seven counts of lying on financial disclosure forms to hide gifts and free home renovations, said he was grateful that the judge took the allegations of misconduct seriously and welcomed the investigation of the prosecutors. He said what happened in the case "nearly destroyed" his faith in the criminal justice system.

Sullivan had ordered the government to hand over documents related to the allegations of misconduct by prosecutors. ...............

[acmavm]

8. Tell Sullivan to look over the Siegelman case and give an opinion on

that 'miscarriage' while he's at it. Maybe he'll find that the Stevens case is the second biggest miscarriage of justice he's ever seen.

[gratuitous]

10. That occurred to me as well

If we're looking for shocking miscarriages of justice, the detritus left over from the Bush Justice Department should yield a treasure trove of shock. I also note that the judge isn't too enamored of prosecutorial shortcuts, whether they're perpetrated on U.S. Senators, the meanest drug dealer, or perhaps most significantly, Guantanamo detainees. That might not bode well for other Bush administration figures if that sort of sentiment catches on with the federal judiciary.

[L. Coyote]

9. NY Times Editorial: Mr. Holder and the Ted Stevens Case

NY Times Editorial
Mr. Holder and the Ted Stevens Case
April 2, 2009 - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03fri3.html


For eight years the Bush Justice Department cynically put politics and ideology above the law. So it is gratifying to see how Attorney General Eric Holder is handling the case against Ted Stevens, the former Alaska senator who was convicted last year on seven felony counts of ethics violations.

...... Mr. Holder should ensure that the Justice Department gets to the bottom of what went wrong and subject other cases that have raised red flags to similar scrutiny........ Mr. Holder, whose department is continuing to investigate the Stevens prosecution, now needs to determine whether the prosecutors’ conduct was so egregious that they should face their own ethics charges.

He should not stop with this case. Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, and Paul Minor, a prominent Mississippi trial lawyer, have charged that Justice Department prosecutors engaged in unethical behavior in cases that led to their convictions. Both men claim that they were singled out for prosecution because of their affiliation with the Democratic Party.

Given the flagrant partisanship of the Bush Justice Department, it is especially reassuring to see Mr. Holder ignore party lines to do the right thing by Mr. Stevens. It has been far too long since the attorney general seemed interested in enforcing ethics and nonpartisanship in a department that has been shockingly lacking in both.

[mod mom]

17. Good for the NYT. Hey, L. Coyote, have you ever heard of the GOP political network

down south in AL e called the "Enterprise" ie a crime family?

[L. Coyote]

26. That's the name of the conspirators behind the Iran-Contra weapons sales.

By conspirators, I mean "defense contractors" who got the profits, of course.
It's the profits, and that's why they call themselves "The Enterprise" I guess.

[librechik]

11. guess why--the prosecutors happen to be Democrats.

I know--it seems odd in Alaska, and I can't find the source right now, but I read it as scuttlebutt
when the trial first stalled over prosecutorial misconduct. That's why I remember it, it's unusual to find Dems doing that sort of thing.

Anyway, can't prove it, just my 2pence

[L. Coyote]

29. The focus is on withholding evidence from Stevens "in order to convict" as oposed to

"in order to cause dismissal" and that is a very huge political difference.

This is going to play out different than many here expect!!
Stevens is going to be the cry baby, not the crook now.

[BuyingThyme]

12. Is there a logarithmic tense of the word IRONY?

[L. Coyote]

19. No, I don't think so, it’s not funny, but it is irony.

Regarding a logarithmic tense, achieving full first-order temporal expressiveness of terminological logics by embedding point-based tense operators in propositionally closed concept languages resulting in temporal terminological logics fully expressive over linear time in the sense that all first-order temporal formulae over these time structures are expressible by future-oriented tense operators interpreted over linear, discrete, unbounded time like their transitive closure, is computable in polynomial space to obtain directly an axiomatization and a tableau-based algorithm for the tenselogical extension of terminological logics, so maybe! :rofl:

On edit. I left out a comma.

[BuyingThyme]

23. Yep.

[yowzayowzayowza]

13. Most excellent.

Non-partisan beginnings may get Siegelman some justice.

[tekisui]

16. Keep tuggin on every thread.

[Warpy]

20. Good, the mistakes were so utterly boneheaded

that either the prosecutors were wildly incompetent, too incompetent to have graduated law school, or the fix was in.

This, like everything else happening in Alaska, stinks to high heaven.

[Igel]

32. Just try "greedy". n/t

[L. Coyote]

37. Who know who did what to mess up who how where when to fix this finish, but

no doubt someone other than Stevens is about to get kicked in the ass!

You start out a bit like Elliot Spitzer going after bad guys (except you are a DC girl and not into hookers) and next thing you know ...
a whistleblower? ... something about the story stinks and the powerful Corrupt Republican politician comes out saying he smells like a rose.

[L. Coyote]

25. NY Times: Judge Orders Investigation of Stevens Prosecutors

By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID STOUT
April 7, 2009 - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/us/politics/08stevens.html


WASHINGTON — A furious federal judge on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of ordering that the prosecutors who bungled the case of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska be investigated for possible criminal wrongdoing.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan dismissed the charges against Mr. Stevens, which was expected given the way the case has disintegrated since the conviction in October. But the judge went well beyond that step, declaring that what the prosecutors did was the worst “mishandling or misconduct that I’ve seen in my 25 years.”

Judge Sullivan spoke disdainfully of the prosecutors’ repeated assertions that any mistakes during the trial were inadvertent and made in good faith. He said he had witnessed “shocking and serious” violations of the principle that prosecutors are obligated to turn over all relevant material to the defense.

The judge appointed the attorney Henry Schuelke as special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal contempt charges against the prosecution team.

[Blackhatjack]

27. Keep in mind these Prosecutors violated a direct Court Order ....

Rule #1 - Never lie to the Court.
Rule #2 - Never intentionally violate an Order issued by the Court.
Rule #3 - Violations of Rules #1 and #2 will result in swift and severe consequences.

I wouldn't want to be one of those prosecutors right now .... alternative occupations might be waiting for them after this special prosecutor is finished with them.

[L. Coyote]

28. McClatchy: Judge orders criminal probe of Stevens case misconduct

Judge orders criminal probe of Stevens case misconduct
Erika Bolstad | McClatchy Newspapers - http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/65659.html


WASHINGTON — A federal judge today ...announced he was appointing a special prosecutor ....

Holder said an internal investigation had been launched into the matter, but Judge Sullivan said he was not content to allow the Justice Department's probe to serve as punishment for the lawyers involved in the case. He said he had asked a former military judge, Henry Schulke III of Washington D.C., to investigate the conduct of five prosecutors in the case for potential obstruction of justice.

They are: the head of the Justice Deparment's Public Integrity Section, William Welch; the lead trial attorney, Brenda Morris; two trial attorneys in the Public Integrity Section, Nicholas Marsh and Edward Sullivan; and two assistant U.S. Attorneys in Alaska, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke.

"I have not pre-judged these attorneys for their culpability, and I hope the record will find no intentional obstruction of justice," Judge Sullivan said.....

No apology will ever be sufficient to make up for the wrongs done to Stevens, his lawyer said.

"Nothing can be done that will give the citizens of Alaska the senator they sureley would have elected," Brendan Sullivan said.

All 13 of the attorneys who worked on the case appeared in court with Stevens — five at the defense table with him and another eight a row of chairs lining the courtroom.......


JOIN THE DISCUSSION

[spanone]

30. the pissed-off judge ordered this probe.....this is great news...

take it completely out of justices' hands.

[keepthemhonest]

33. I am sure they'll just let this guy off too

This is rediculus they should not let stevens off for this.Re trial.Damn crooks