Legal Commentary

Judge Throws Out Ted Stevens' Conviction, Orders Misconduct Inquiry

By Jeralyn

U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan officially tossed former Senator Ted Stevens' conviction today due to prosecutorial misconduct.

A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday threw out the criminal conviction of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct and ordered a criminal probe into the Justice Department's handling of the longtime lawmaker's corruption trial.

"In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said at the hearing, granting a government motion to throw out the conviction and dismiss the indictment.

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The Judge appointed a special prosecutor, Washington attorney Henry Schulke, to investigate whether criminal contempt charges should be brought against any of the prosecutors.

"Until recently, my faith in the criminal system, particularly the judicial system, was unwavering," Stevens told the court. "But what some members of the prosecution team did nearly destroyed my faith. Their conduct had consequences for me that they will never realize and can never be reversed."

Sullivan rejected the idea of an internal DOJ investigation:

Sullivan said the matter was too serious to be handled internally by the Justice Department, which, he said, took too long to investigate misconduct allegations.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 07, 2009 (boomark / email).