Judge may dismiss Ted Stevens' conviction today

[April 07, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Sen. Ted Stevens is getting another day in court today, and this time a federal judge is expected to dismiss his corruption conviction after prosecutors acknowledged mishandling the case.

The Justice Department has asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to toss out Stevens' conviction and vacate his indictment. If the motion is granted as expected, it will kill a high-profile victory against congressional corruption reached last fall when a jury found the senator had lied about gifts and home renovations.

Stevens narrowly lost re-election just days later. He had been in the Senate 40 years, making him the longest-serving Republican senator when he was defeated.

He was convicted of seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor. He had appealed his conviction and had been awaiting sentencing.

At trial, he argued that he didn't disclose the items he received because they were not gifts. A $2,700 massage chair, for instance, remained in his house for seven years but Stevens said it was a loan. He said he assumed a $3,200 stained-glass window was paid for, since his wife takes care of such things. A $29,000 fish statue was a donation to his foundation, he said, and only remained on his front porch because that's where the donors shipped it.

Jurors unanimously rejected Stevens' defense. But problems have tainted the conviction, including prosecutors' recent admission that they failed to turn over notes of a crucial interview in which a witness contradicted a statement he made later under oath at trial.

The prosecutors who handled the trial have been removed from the case and their conduct is under investigation. Sullivan held Justice Department lawyers in contempt in February for failing to turn over documents and called their behavior "outrageous."

The judge had ordered Justice to provide the agency's internal communications about a whistle-blower complaint brought by an FBI agent involved in the investigation. The agent objected to Justice Department tactics during the trial, including failure to turn over evidence and an "inappropriate relationship" between the lead agent on the case and the prosecution's star witness, Bill Allen.

In asking for charges to be dropped, Justice Department attorneys said they recently discovered prosecutors' notes from an April 2008 interview with Allen. The notes indicate that Allen said he did not recall talking to a mutual friend about giving Stevens a bill for work done at the senator's home in Alaska.

Yet when he testified at the trial, Allen claimed he did have such a conversation. Under trial rules, such contradictory statements must be given to the defense team, and they weren't.

[Associated Press; By NEDRA PICKLER and MATT APUZZO]

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