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Report Excoriates Stevens Prosecutors
Lawyers behaving badly always piss me off.
A Justice Department prosecution team in 2008 withheld exculpatory evidence, in some instances intentionally, in the bungled prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens, according to a court-ordered report released Thursday.
A jury convicted Mr. Stevens in October 2008 of accepting and concealing tens of thousands of dollars in free home renovations and other gifts. Six months later, after evidence of prosecutorial misconduct emerged, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan threw out the charges at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder.
The senator denied all wrongdoing and narrowly lost his re-election bid in 2008. He died in a plane crash in 2010.
Among the report's key findings, Mr. Schuelke found that prosecutor Brenda Morris, brought in to lead the case just two days before the indictment in July 2008, largely left the trial team unsupervised. The report said she failed to oversee officials who were supposed to review materials for information favorable to Mr. Stevens and turn over relevant documents to the defense.
In particular, Mr. Schuelke said, they failed to turn over evidence that would have undermined explosive testimony by the government's star witness, Bill Allen, a onetime fishing buddy of Mr. Stevens whose company did renovation work on the senator's house.
Mr. Allen testified at trial that a mutual friend said Mr. Stevens was "just covering his ass" when he asked for a bill and didn't actually want to pay. That testimony directly conflicted with statements Mr. Allen made to government investigators months earlier. According to the report, four prosecutors and an FBI agent said they "forgot" Mr. Allen's earlier statements. Mr. Schuelke said the "complete, simultaneous and long-term memory failure by the entire prosecution team" was "extraordinary" and "strains credulity."
Ms. Morris, in a letter to Mr. Schuelke, pointed the blame partly at senior Justice Department managers who she said installed her on the case over her objections. "My late assignment to the trial team sparked lingering tension and resentment," she wrote, adding that she "did not commit prosecutorial misconduct."
Mr. Schuelke also singled out two junior members of the team, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, saying they intentionally withheld evidence from a construction foreman corroborating Mr. Stevens's contention that he thought he paid for the renovations.
The report said the men failed to disclose conflicting accounts about whether Mr. Allen, the star witness, might have induced perjury in an unrelated sex case. That evidence would have "significantly impeached" Mr. Allen's credibility as a witness, Mr. Schuelke said.
Matthew Menchel, a lawyer for Mr. Goeke, said the report's assertions against his client were "against the weight of the evidence." He said Mr. Goeke pushed higher-level prosecutors to turn over information to the defense, but "those superiors made the decision not to make those disclosures."
Bottini lawyer Ken Wainstein said in a statement that his client was "a man of honor and integrity" who "would never commit intentional misconduct."
Mr. Wainstein said prosecution mistakes were "inevitable" in the Stevens case because of dysfunctional Justice Department management and a "dramatically compressed" time for trial preparation.
Williams & Connolly, the law firm that represented Mr. Stevens, said in a statement the report documented "evidence of government corruption that is shocking in its boldness and its breadth."
The defense lawyers said: "Corrupt prosecutors obtained an illegal verdict against Sen. Stevens on October 27, 2008. As a result, a sitting senator lost certain re-election."
Mr. Schuelke said he couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some of the prosecutors' misconduct was intentional, and he didn't recommend criminal charges against them. It is rare for prosecutors to be charged with misconduct, because they generally enjoy immunity for their actions at a trial unless it can be proven that they acted in bad faith to subvert the justice system.
However, the prosecutors in the Stevens case could face other actions, including dismissal from the Justice Department or disbarment. The department's Office of Professional Responsibility has separately been investigating the lawyers' conduct, and the report could be used as the basis for disciplinary action by state bars.
Mr. Holder said in recent congressional testimony that he found the Schuelke report disturbing. In a statement Thursday, the Justice Department said it had "instituted a sweeping training curriculum for all federal prosecutors" to ensure they uphold their ethics obligations. It said instances of misconduct were "rare."
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