Legal News

Semantics & the Law: When is a Conviction a Conviction?

By Dan Slater

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, right, answers a question during a congressional debate in Anchorage, Alaska, Oct. 30, 2008. (AP/Al Grillo)

The question is surfacing in Alaska, where Sen. Ted Stevens, newly returned from his D.C. trial after a jury found him guilty on seven counts, is claiming that he hasn’t been convicted of anything.

In Thursday night’s debate between Stevens and his opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, Stevens, a Harvard trained lawyer, looked into the camera and said, “I have not been convicted of anything.” Stevens told voters he’ll be found innocent and he won’t step down. “I have not been convicted,” he repeated.

So what’s the deal?

“The senator’s playing a semantics word game,” Loyola law prof Laurie Levenson told the Anchorage Daily News. “In everyday parlance in the criminal justice system, once the jury has reached a verdict, we generally say the defendant is convicted.”

Begich said Stevens is in denial. “Senator Ted Stevens is not being honest with himself or the voters of Alaska and his mischaracterization of his conviction is outrageous,” Begich said in a written statement.

“A conviction in my mind is when you finally had overruling of the motions made to set aside a verdict, or have a new trial and you’re sentenced,” said the famously defiant Stevens on Friday. “I think that’s the legal definition.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).