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DOJ asks Court to Toss Ted Stevens' Conviction

By Jeralyn

The Justice Department has asked a federal court in Alaska to throw out the conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said he and other Justice lawyers had reviewed the case and "concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial."

"In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial," Holder said.

[More...]

As to what wasn't turned over:

In a three-page memo filed this morning in U.S. District Court, Justice Department lawyer Paul M. O'Brien, who was brought on to review the case, said he discovered evidence that prosecutors did not turn over notes from an interview in April 2008 with the case's key witness, Bill Allen.

TChris provided most of TalkLeft's coverage of the trial, assembled here.

As he wrote when the Court admonished prosecutors during the trial:

This is why criminal discovery rules are a failed experiment. The government has to turn over material exculpatory evidence, but it decides for itself what is material and what is exculpatory. Parties to civil litigation have a variety of mechanisms to obtain evidence from an adverse party, but in criminal cases, the defense gets only what the prosecution decides to disclose. And as the Stevens case illustrates, prosecutors are sometimes loathe to follow the rules.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).