Below The Beltway

Shortly before Election Day, former Alaska Ted Stevens was convicted of a variety of corruption charges. This was most likely the biggest factor in his defeat on Election Day.

Now, in what can only be described as an absolute stunner, Federal prosecutors are asking that the convictions be voided and the charges dropped:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department moved on Wednesday morning to drop all charges against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who narrowly lost his seat last year shortly after being convicted on seven felony counts of ethics violations.

In a stunning development, Justice Department lawyers told a federal court that they had discovered a new instance of prosecutorial misconduct in the case and asked that the convictions be voided. There would be no new trial in the case.

Mr. Stevens, who is 85, had been the longest serving Republican in the history of the Senate. He had been charged with lying on Senate disclosure forms by concealing an estimated $250,000 worth of goods and services he received, mostly to renovate a chalet he owned in Alaska. Prosecutors said he received most of the goods and services from Bill Allen, a longtime friend who had made a fortune by providing services to Alaska’s booming oil industry.

But in their filing on Wednesday, government lawyers said that trial prosecutors had concealed from Mr. Stevens’s defense lawyers the notes from an interview with Mr. Allen that raised significant doubts about the charges. Among other things, Mr. Allen asserted in the interview that the work on the Stevens home was worth only about $80,000, they said.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., who made the decision to move to drop the charges, said in a statement that “I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial.” He said it was “in the interests of justice” to dismiss the indictment and forgo any new trial.

Mr. Stevens’s lawyers, Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr. and Robert M. Cary, issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming the decision, decrying the conduct of the prosecutors in the case and hailing Mr. Holder as “a pillar of integrity in the legal community.” The statement called the case “a sad story and a warning to everyone” that “any citizen can be convicted if prosecutors are hell-bent on ignoring the Constitution.”

Indeed, so it would seem.

While it’s not at all clear that the evidence with held from Stevens’ lawyers would have established his innocence, it would have cast serious doubt upon the credibility of the principle witness against him:

In the new filing on Wednesday, which was first reported by NPR, the government said that it had recently discovered previously undisclosed notes made by prosecutors of an interview with Mr. Allen on April 15, 2008. In the interview, Mr. Allen was asked about a note he received from Senator Stevens on Oct. 6, 2002, discussing the situation of former Senator Bob Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat who was forced to resign from office over the issue of failing to disclose gifts.

The Justice Department said the notes from the interview showed that Mr. Allen made different statements about that exchange than he had during his testimony at the trial. Mr. Stevens’s lawyers should have had those notes to help them cross-examine Mr. Allen, the department said on Wednesday.

While, it’s hard to say what impact this might have had on the jury, Holder clearly made the right call here in moving to have the charges dismissed completely. Thanks to the overzealous misconduct of these prosecutors, though, we’ll never know; they tainted the trial and they’ve made the possibility of another trial nearly impossible.

James Joyner notes:

Whether we’re talking Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Monicagate, Martha Stewart, Lewis Libby, William Jefferson, Ted Stevens, or Rod Blagojevich, a team of really smart lawyers armed with extreme confidence that they’ve got a bad guy in their sites, unlimited resources, and operating under the white hot glare of the media spotlight, will figure out how to bring charges. In most, if not all, of those cases, there actually is/was underlying wrongdoing on the part of the accused. But making charges stick is often tricky.

And, apparently because of that, the Stevens’ prosecutors sought to play fast-and-loose with the rules of legal ethics.

I still think it’s generally a good thing that Stevens is out of the Senate, but he didn’t deserve to have his rights violated in this manner.