Stevens prosecutors’ actions were ‘illegal’
Senate hearing held on report
WASHINGTON — The court-appointed investigator who found rampant misconduct in the corruption prosecution of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens said during a Senate hearing Wednesday that federal prosecutors’ actions were “illegal’’ but stopped short of suggesting they should be charged with crimes.
Henry Schuelke, author of a March 15 report that concluded that prosecutors intentionally withheld critical information from the sena- tor’s defense team, said he would have recommended criminal contempt charges had the federal judge overseeing the matter specifically ordered government lawyers to turn over the information at trial.
Schuelke told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Stevens prosecutors were part of a culture in which winning the case was the “primary operative motive.’’
Asked whether the prosecutors should be held criminally responsible for their conduct, Schuelke said that decision should be left to the Justice Department. His report — ordered by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who threw out the charges against Stevens in 2009 — was to determine only whether the prosecutors should be charged with criminal contempt for violating a court order.
The prosecutors’ lawyers maintain that their clients’ conduct was fair and proper.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who learned of the misconduct after taking office in 2009 and requested that the case be dismissed, ordered an internal review, which is ongoing.
Among the failures outlined in Schuelke’s report was a prosecution “permeated by the systematic concealment’’ of evidence favorable to the defense. The report described a rogue team of prosecutors and federal agents who allegedly allowed its star witness to give false testimony before a jury that later found Stevens guilty of seven counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure statements.
Within days of the jury’s decision, the Republican senator, who had served for four decades, narrowly lost his re-election bid. He died in a plane crash in 2010.
The report said prosecutors made “astonishing misstatements’’ to Stevens’ lawyers in an attempt to conceal information suggesting that their star witness, oilman Bill Allen, had in an unrelated case pressured a former child prostitute to sign a false declaration that he never had sex with her when she was underage.
“I have great concerns about this case,’’ said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT. “What happened in the Stevens case should not happen again, whether the defendant is prominent or an indigent defendant.’’