Legal News

Judge in Stevens Case: I Want Mukasey?s Declaration Before He Leaves

By Dan Slater

If the Law Blog had a contest for the Most Theatrical Trial of 2008, the bungled — though, at least for now, successful — prosecution of Alaska’s former Senator, Ted Stevens, would easily take the cake. (Sorry, Bratz and Barbie.)

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan during a ceremony at the federal courthouse in Washington, May 1, 2008. (AP/Charles Dharapak)

In October, Stevens was found guilty (is that a conviction?) on seven counts of lying on Senate financial documents. Then, last month we noted a report that a whistleblowing FBI agent had accused prosecutors of intentionally withholding exculpatory evidence from Stevens’ lawyers and scheming to conceal a witness from the defense team.

Now, Legal Times reports, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over Stevens’s trial, is telling the Department of Justice to buck up and play ball. Yesterday, Judge Sullivan ordered Attorney General Michael Mukasey to prepare a declaration that addresses questions about how the government handled the whistleblower complaint.

“This is the most important thing on his desk right now,” Judge Sullivan reportedly declared at a hearing. “I want the declaration of the attorney general before he leaves office.” Legal Times reports that the judge “appeared furious, angrily pointing his finger and raising his voice as he pressed two top-level prosecutors, William Welch and Brenda Morris, for answers about how the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section handled the whistleblower complaint and when the section knew that the complainant had been denied whistleblower protection.” Welch, notes Legal Times, is the chief of the Public Integrity Section; Morris, who led the Stevens prosecution team, is principal deputy chief.

Morris said the Office of Professional Responsibility handled the whistleblower’s complaint and indicated there is no free-flowing sharing of information between OPR and the Public Integrity Section. Stevens’ defense lawyers, according to Legal Times, have incorporated the whistleblower complaint in a motion to dismiss the indictment.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 15, 2009 (boomark / email).