Mr. Holder and the Ted Stevens Case--Editorial

Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
April 3, 2009

For eight years the Bush Justice Department cynically put politics and ideology above the law. So it is gratifying to see how Attorney General Eric Holder is handling the case against Ted Stevens, the former Alaska senator who was convicted last year on seven felony counts of ethics violations.

Mr. Holder announced this week that he would ask a judge to drop all charges against Mr. Stevens, a Republican, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Holder should ensure that the Justice Department gets to the bottom of what went wrong and subject other cases that have raised red flags to similar scrutiny.

Mr. Stevens was convicted of making false statements on Senate disclosure forms to hide an estimated $250,000 in home renovations and gifts, many from Bill Allen, an old friend with close ties to his state’s oil industry. The Justice Department says that prosecutors failed to turn over to the defense notes from an interview with Mr. Allen, a prime witness in the case, which conflicted with parts of his trial testimony.

Prosecutors are legally required to turn over evidence in their possession that would help a defendant prove his innocence. This revelation is only the latest in a series of instances in which Mr. Stevens’s prosecutors appear to have acted wrongly.

The prosecutors’ bad acts do not necessarily mean that Mr. Stevens was innocent of misusing his office. But in light of the prosecutorial wrongdoing, and the fact that Mr. Stevens lost his Senate seat last November, Mr. Holder was right not to choose to retry the case.

Mr. Holder, whose department is continuing to investigate the Stevens prosecution, now needs to determine whether the prosecutors’ conduct was so egregious that they should face their own ethics charges.

He should not stop with this case. Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, and Paul Minor, a prominent Mississippi trial lawyer, have charged that Justice Department prosecutors engaged in unethical behavior in cases that led to their convictions. Both men claim that they were singled out for prosecution because of their affiliation with the Democratic Party.

Given the flagrant partisanship of the Bush Justice Department, it is especially reassuring to see Mr. Holder ignore party lines to do the right thing by Mr. Stevens. It has been far too long since the attorney general seemed interested in enforcing ethics and nonpartisanship in a department that has been shockingly lacking in both.