By Sean Cockerham, McClatchy Newspapers –
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that its misconduct in the case against then-Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was an isolated incident and Congress shouldn’t pass a law forcing prosecutors to disclose all evidence they have to the defense.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is pushing a bill to require prosecutors to turn over evidence to the defense immediately that could be favorable to the accused. Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich — who beat Stevens in an election just days after his conviction, which later was thrown out — is a co-sponsor. The American Civil Liberties Union, among others, supports the bill, saying that this type of problem happens too often.
But the Justice Department released a statement Wednesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on an investigator’s report that concluded the Stevens investigation and prosecution “were permeated by the systematic concealment” of evidence that would have helped Stevens.
“The Stevens case was deeply flawed. But it does not represent the work of federal prosecutors around the country who work for justice every day,” the Justice Department said in its statement. “And it does not suggest a systemic problem warranting a significant departure from well-established criminal justice practices that have contributed to record reductions in the rates of crime in this country while at the same time providing defendants with due process.”
The Justice Department said it already had made internal revisions to see that prosecutors followed the law and this didn’t happen again.
Special prosecutor Henry Schuelke, who produced the court-ordered report on misconduct in the Stevens case, suggested to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the Justice Department’s response has been impressive but falls short.
He said the difference between the internal changes and congressional action was whether the force of law would be behind the policy that prosecutors must disclose all evidence that was favorable to the defense. That’s a higher standard than “materiality,” in which prosecutors disclose only what they think could change the outcome of the case, he said.
The Justice Department said it was worried that disclosures of all evidence could put victims and witnesses in danger, interfere with other investigations and pose national security risks.
There have been other cases with Justice Department errors comparable to the Stevens prosecution. The same judge who presided over Stevens’ case, for example, found in 2009 that prosecutors improperly had withheld from the defense important psychiatric records of a government witness who was used in a “significant” number of the Guantanamo Bay terrorism cases.
The Justice Department said the failures in the Stevens case “were not typical” and that it had filed more than 800,000 cases over the past decade with more than a million defendants. It said that less than three-hundredths of 1 percent had led to investigations by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility over failure to disclose evidence.
Schuelke told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he thinks that prosecutors withheld evidence in the Stevens case just because they wanted to win.
“That motive to win the case was the principal operative motive. I do not believe any of the prosecutors harbored a personal animus toward Sen. Stevens. I don’t believe they sought fame and glory. They did, however, want to win the case,” Schuelke said.
