RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com
A VelvetRevolution.us Campaign
Under the Bush administration, the Justice Department was driven by ideology, and prosecutions were often used to settle scores and intimidate the opposition. In fact, the GOP, under the direction of Karl Rove, used the DoJ to target political enemies including Democratic contributors and those who were a threat to GOP electoral gains and big business interests. The Department was used as an arm of the White House to destroy these Democrats. This political profiling resulted in the criminal prosecution of many on the enemies list, including Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and trial lawyer Paul Minor.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder promised to return justice to the Justice Department and free the department from politics. We are now insisting that that promise be fulfilled by righting the wrongs of political profiling and prosecutions under the previous administration. We call on Attorney General Holder to immediately vacate the convictions of Siegelman and Minor, to investigate and identify others who have been politically prosecuted, and to vacate their convictions. Political profiling, like racial profiling, is wrong; when it results in a criminal prosecution, it constitutes prosecutorial misconduct. Our letter to AG Holder, endorsed by organizations representing hundreds of thousands of citizens and signed by many patriotic Americans, makes clear that Mr. Holder must act quickly to restore justice at the Department of Justice.
We ask other organizations to sign on to this campaign by sending an email to RestoreJusticeAtJustice@velvetrevolution.us. Individuals can sign on using the form below. This campaign will include a broad public relations push so we urge everyone to spread the word.
Attorney General Eric Holder April 13, 2009
Department of Justice
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Holder:
Thank you for taking the necessary steps to vacate the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens because of misconduct by federal prosecutors. We now ask that you quickly do the same for all Bush-era politically motivated cases, starting with Don Siegelman and Paul Minor. Such action is necessary to restore public confidence in the rule of law and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), and to rectify a vast and manifest injustice. You must act soon, because the victims of such prosecutions are now suffering—some of them cruelly. It is unacceptable that any one of them should have to endure imprisonment, financial ruin, and even loss of family while courts ponder whether trial error occurred.
It is well established that the previous DOJ was controlled by partisans who misused their authority by targeting Democrats and others with viewpoints different from their own. As a result, people have been variously wronged, either by (1) rejection for employment at DOJ, (2) dismissal from positions there, or (3) trumped-up and/or partisan-targeted criminal prosecution. Under your leadership, the DOJ has moved toward ending such abuse. With your investigations of the hiring practices at DOJ and the US Attorney firings, you have begun to take concrete steps to deal with Points (1) and (2). As to Point (3), however, not enough has been done. Other than early, still-cursory DOJ investigations of problems with the prosecution of Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, your office has announced no action or intention to redress well-documented instances of selective criminal prosecutions carried out by the Bush administration.
A preponderance of evidence makes clear that zealous partisans in both the Bush White House and DOJ used their positions to protect and/or empower pro-Bush Republicans, while targeting those who disagreed—primarily Democrats—as enemies. Certain politicians, such as Gov. Siegelman, were targeted for threatening hoped-for GOP electoral gains, while certain jurists and attorneys, such as Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor, were punished for obstructing the intentions of the party's allies in big business.
As Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle recently reported in an article urging the release of Paul Minor, a study by University of Missouri Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan shows that "eighty percent of the Bush DOJ's political investigations targeted Democrats -- 5.6 Democrats for every Republican investigated by U.S. Attorneys for political misconduct. Shields noted in Congressional testimony that ‘such selective investigation and prosecution rates’ represent a clear bias in the severely disproportionate ‘political profiling’ of Democrats under Bush.”
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld most charges against Gov. Siegelman, with everyone involved deliberately ignoring the huge elephant in that courtroom—i.e., that post-trial revelations, deemed inadmissible by the appellate judges, pointed to profound political corruption as well as prosecutorial abuse. The governor should not have to wait months or years for a court to address these issues when you have the authority to do so at once.
And then there is Paul Minor, an attorney now in federal prison for a “crime” related to the funding of Democratic candidates and causes. Minor’s wife is dying of cancer in a hospital in Baton Rouge. Last month, he was given a three-hour pass to spend a moment with her (under supervision), but she had no chance to talk to him because she had been given her pain medication and lay fast asleep throughout his visit. Why should this man have to spend another hour away from his wife’s bedside, awaiting the decision of a court, when the flagrant partisan intent behind his prosecution should move the DOJ to withdraw charges, just as you did in Sen. Stevens' case? **
Selective prosecution for political advantage is a prosecutorial abuse at least as troubling as the wrongs in Sen. Stevens' case and, arguably, far more dangerous. We therefore ask that you immediately order the dismissal of charges against Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, and move quickly to investigate and identify other cases mounted by the Bush Administration for political advantage and, where appropriate, vacate them immediately. Only through such righteous action, which is wholly in your power, can we be sure that justice will, at last, be done, and that America's courts may once again deserve the public's confidence.
Sincerely,
Brad Friedman
Co-Founder, VelvetRevolution.us
** On the evening of April 13, 2009, Sylvia Minor died without her husband by her side after the DOJ opposed both bail pending appeal and a compassionate bedside furlough.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Ted Stevens Rejected Deal to Admit Guilt
Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
April 14, 2009
By Neil A. Lewis
WASHINGTON — Ted Stevens, the former senator from Alaska, turned down a plea offer from federal prosecutors that would have spared him a trial and jail time but required him to plead guilty to a single felony count, according to newly disclosed records.
Mr. Stevens’s lawyers rejected the proposal on his behalf, according to transcripts of discussions between the trial judge and lawyers for both sides. The transcripts were sealed until the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court, recently ordered them opened.
The disclosure of the offer and rejection of a plea bargain, first reported Monday on the Web site of Legal Times, is the latest twist in the case of Mr. Stevens, a Republican whose conviction on ethics charges was recently thrown out by Judge Sullivan because of errors by prosecutors who are now themselves the subject of an ethics inquiry.
On July 31, just weeks before the trial was to begin, Judge Sullivan asked the lawyers in a private conference if there had been any negotiations on a plea agreement. Brendan Sullivan, Mr. Stevens’s lawyer, said “they did offer us no-jail disposition” for pleading guilty to one felony count. “We turned it down,” Mr. Sullivan added.
In October, a jury found Mr. Stevens guilty on seven felony counts in connection with Senate disclosure forms that did not list gifts and renovation services, largely for a family residence in Girdwood, Alaska. During the five-week trial, Judge Sullivan repeatedly scolded Justice Department prosecutors for improperly withholding information that defense lawyers could have used to bolster their case.
Mr. Stevens, who is 85, lost his bid for re-election by a close margin within days of the verdict. But Judge Sullivan had not yet sentenced Mr. Stevens, who faced an almost certain jail term, because he was still considering motions from Mr. Stevens’s lawyers to order a new trial because of the prosecutors’ errors.
Before Judge Sullivan ruled, however, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., said earlier this month that a new team of government lawyers he had assigned to the case discovered a new instance of the prosecution team’s withholding information that could have been used by the defense. Mr. Holder asked that the case be dismissed and said the department would not seek to retry Mr. Stevens.
The existence of discussions over a possible plea provides some insight into the case. Prosecutors did not charge Mr. Stevens with a more straightforward corruption count like bribery, which could have been harder to prove than what they charged him with, failing to file required disclosure forms.
But the prosecution apparently believed that it was important that Mr. Stevens acknowledge a felony to avoid a trial. For Mr. Stevens, such a plea would have raised a serious obstacle to his plans to return to the Senate, where he had been a member for 40 years.
April 14, 2009
By Neil A. Lewis
WASHINGTON — Ted Stevens, the former senator from Alaska, turned down a plea offer from federal prosecutors that would have spared him a trial and jail time but required him to plead guilty to a single felony count, according to newly disclosed records.
Mr. Stevens’s lawyers rejected the proposal on his behalf, according to transcripts of discussions between the trial judge and lawyers for both sides. The transcripts were sealed until the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court, recently ordered them opened.
The disclosure of the offer and rejection of a plea bargain, first reported Monday on the Web site of Legal Times, is the latest twist in the case of Mr. Stevens, a Republican whose conviction on ethics charges was recently thrown out by Judge Sullivan because of errors by prosecutors who are now themselves the subject of an ethics inquiry.
On July 31, just weeks before the trial was to begin, Judge Sullivan asked the lawyers in a private conference if there had been any negotiations on a plea agreement. Brendan Sullivan, Mr. Stevens’s lawyer, said “they did offer us no-jail disposition” for pleading guilty to one felony count. “We turned it down,” Mr. Sullivan added.
In October, a jury found Mr. Stevens guilty on seven felony counts in connection with Senate disclosure forms that did not list gifts and renovation services, largely for a family residence in Girdwood, Alaska. During the five-week trial, Judge Sullivan repeatedly scolded Justice Department prosecutors for improperly withholding information that defense lawyers could have used to bolster their case.
Mr. Stevens, who is 85, lost his bid for re-election by a close margin within days of the verdict. But Judge Sullivan had not yet sentenced Mr. Stevens, who faced an almost certain jail term, because he was still considering motions from Mr. Stevens’s lawyers to order a new trial because of the prosecutors’ errors.
Before Judge Sullivan ruled, however, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., said earlier this month that a new team of government lawyers he had assigned to the case discovered a new instance of the prosecution team’s withholding information that could have been used by the defense. Mr. Holder asked that the case be dismissed and said the department would not seek to retry Mr. Stevens.
The existence of discussions over a possible plea provides some insight into the case. Prosecutors did not charge Mr. Stevens with a more straightforward corruption count like bribery, which could have been harder to prove than what they charged him with, failing to file required disclosure forms.
But the prosecution apparently believed that it was important that Mr. Stevens acknowledge a felony to avoid a trial. For Mr. Stevens, such a plea would have raised a serious obstacle to his plans to return to the Senate, where he had been a member for 40 years.
Paul Minor’s Wife Dies Without Him
Source: Jackson Free Press in Jackson, Mississippi
April 14, 2009
By Adam Lynch
Also see: Dem At Your Own Risk
The wife of a possibly wrongfully convicted Mississippi attorney has died. Sylvia Minor, the wife of former attorney Paul Minor, died from brain cancer Monday night, former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz told the Jackson Free Press.
Minor, who is serving 11 years for judicial corruption, is appealing his conviction, arguing that the U.S. Justice Department under President George Bush pushed prosecutions against Democrat politicians and Democratic fundraisers like himself in an attempt to swing elections toward Republicans. A congressional committee is investigating whether former Bush administration Chief of Staff Karl Rove influenced the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but Rove has repeatedly refused to answer questions from the committee under oath.
Minor had asked to be released on bond April 9 pending appeal, but 5th Circuit Court Judge Priscilla Owen, who had hired Rove as a campaign manager for $250,000 to help her in her run for Texas Supreme Court in 1994, refused to grant him a bond. The panel later upheld Owen’s decision—despite the fact that she later recused herself from the panel because of conflict-of-interest issues.
Minor's father, columnist Bill Minor, called the situation "senseless," because the court may ultimately uphold the appeal—but too late for Minor to be with his dying wife. "He should have been out on bond anyway, pending appeal," Minor said today.
A three-judge panel is currently reviewing Minor’s appeal and voicing questions about the irregular jury instructions granted by Reagan appointee U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate during Minor’s 2007 trial. Wingate, after presiding over the prosecution’s failed attempt to convict Minor in a 2005 corruption trial, instructed the jury in 2007 that they did not have to find any proof of a bribery in Minor’s corruption case.
One of the panel of three judges, Will Garwood, seemed doubtful that the prosecution had outlined no particular exchange of goods in the bribery case, as did Judge Catharina Haynes.
“All right. But you agree that there has to be some kind of agreement, OK; I’m going to give you money and you're going to rule in my favor on X in some way,” Haynes said. “[W]hat is your contention of what that agreement was? Because neither of these two cases (used to convict the defendants) that we have been presented were pending in front of those judges at that time as I understand it.”
The panel will decide on the appeal at an unspecified date.
Minor had recently asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to weigh in on his release request, although Holder had not responded as of her death, according to Minor's father.
“Paul tried everything he could to be with Sylvia in her last days,” said Diaz, a Democratic-leaning judge unsuccessfully prosecuted by U.S Attorney Dunn Lampton during the Minor trial, although Diaz never presided over any of Minor’s disputed cases. “We just wish their family well, and we’re sorry he couldn’t be with her.”
The panel told Minor last month that he could still petition the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a temporary release, although the bureau had allowed little humanity in Minor’s last petition. His last temporary release through the bureau’s generosity got him three hours with his wife in February.
Minor’s lawyer Hiram Eastland told the Jackson Free Press that Sylvia Minor drifted in and out of consciousness during that visit and said it was doubtful that she even remembered seeing her husband’s face. Minor's father said that, as of this morning, Paul Minor does not know whether he will be able to attend the funeral.
© Jackson Free Press, Inc.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Shortfalls Unraveled Stevens's Conviction; Observers Cite Prosecutors' Lack of Time, Other Reasons
Source: The Washington Post
April 12, 2009
By Carrie Johnson, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Justice Department team charged with prosecuting former senator Ted Stevens miscalculated by not seeking more time to prepare for the high-stakes corruption trial and fell victim to inexperience and thin staffing, which contributed to its alleged mishandling of witnesses and evidence, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawyers who followed the case.
Last year's compressed trial timeline forced government lawyers to jam their preparations into seven weeks and intensified a series of challenges: the late addition of a new lawyer; an aggressive adversary who deluged them with requests for documents; and a skeptical judge whose behavior turned unpredictable, then punitive.
The difficulties led U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan last week to dismiss a conviction against Stevens, a Republican who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate for nearly 40 years, and to turn the tables and initiate a criminal probe of six of the prosecutors.
Former prosecutors, defense lawyers and onetime Justice Department officials also described more chronic liabilities in the department's Public Integrity Section: Once the "A Team" for fighting corruption in state legislatures, judges' chambers and Congress, the unit in recent years lost staffing, strong supervision, some of its varnish and its insulation from politics.
Only days after the case against Stevens collapsed, lawyers inside and outside the department were chronicling its demise and picking apart the skill of the prosecution team, at least one of whose members had watched cases fall apart in the past. But government officials and defense attorneys alike said they do not think that prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section or its leaders acted out of base political motivations.
The Justice Department, already laboring under well-documented episodes of political interference during the Bush years, is now facing intense scrutiny over whether it flouted the rules in one of the highest-profile cases of the past decade.
Prosecutors and FBI agents are hiring their own lawyers and pointing the finger at one another, even as a special prosecutor and the department's ethics watchdogs are trying to determine whether members of the team broke the law to cheat their way to victory or merely succumbed to lapses of incompetence, inexperience or lax supervision.
The six members of the prosecution team declined to comment or did not return phone calls and e-mail messages left with them and their friends. But department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the unit has a solid record, having secured nearly 400 convictions since 2001.
"For more than 30 years, the Public Integrity Section has been effectively prosecuting public officials, regardless of political affiliation, who abuse their office and their obligation to the American people," Sweeney said. "Every day, in courtrooms nationwide, these prosecutors work under challenging circumstances to hold our public officials accountable for their conduct, and they will continue to do so."
The very nature of the section's mandate, to target corruption across the country, has posed recurrent challenges.
Former department attorneys, for example, cited chronic problems that have plagued the unit: competition and confusion with partner prosecutors in U.S. attorney's offices around the country. Federal prosecutors in the District, for instance, were consulted about the Stevens case starting in 2006 but declined to participate, thinking that the charges were shaky, according to sources familiar with the discussions. The assistant U.S. attorneys also considered overly aggressive the prosecutors' early plan, later abandoned, to get a warrant to search the lawmaker's D.C. area home, the sources said.
The government's path could have been eased had the U.S. attorney's office been part of the case, adding players who were familiar with the courthouse and the personality of the trial judge.
The Stevens case had been handled for years by Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke, two career lawyers from the U.S. attorney's office in Alaska, and two attorneys from the Public Integrity unit, Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan, whose prosecution of Alaska officials had led to charges that Stevens had failed to report gifts on his Senate ethics forms.
As the indictment loomed against Stevens last summer, authorities in the department's criminal division pondered whether to add a more magnetic courtroom presence to the team. Department officials decided to tap Brenda Morris, a feisty, sharp-tongued trial lawyer who had been serving as deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section, to put Stevens on the hot seat and to build rapport with the jury. But that required the other lawyers to spend hours schooling Morris on the nuances of the case, keeping them from tackling boxes of documents related to the case, according to sources close to the lawyers.
It was to be the most high-profile prosecution of Morris's career.
Four years earlier, Morris had run into trouble in a case she handled when a federal jury in Texas acquitted San Antonio criminal defense lawyer Alan Brown, who had been charged with tax offenses. In a subsequent civil suit filed by Brown, who alleged that FBI agents had wrongfully pursued him based on a sketchy account from his disgruntled secretary, the government ultimately paid Brown $1.34 million to settle the claim.
Brown and his lawyers say that Morris ignored warnings from local federal prosecutors who cast doubt on the credibility of a critical witness, an office assistant who peddled questionable information about Brown in a bid to win a reduction in the prison sentence of her boyfriend. A judge in San Antonio had thrown out the case before it went to trial, but an appeals court revived the prosecution, which Morris led.
"She is the race car driver who blew past the red flag," said Bill Reid, a lawyer for Brown in the civil wrongful prosecution case.
But last week, current and former colleagues of Morris defended her reputation and her ethics, saying they do not think that she would intentionally run afoul of the rules.
The Public Integrity Section has had five chiefs in six years. The latest is William M. Welch II, who was honored three years ago by the attorney general for exposing corruption in the Springfield, Mass., government. Welch, one of the six prosecutors now under investigation, did not play a major role in the courtroom during the Stevens case but took a more active posture after the judge raised questions about sharing evidence.
Indeed, during the presidential transition period, incoming Justice Department officials heard complaints about whether career lawyers properly understood their obligations to hand over materials to criminal defendants, prompting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last week to call for additional training and oversight. The Stevens case, perhaps the starkest example of the troubles, brought the severity of the problem into the national spotlight.
Former prosecutors described public corruption probes as particularly tricky. Defendants are used to seizing the stage, they generally have the money to pay for top-flight defense lawyers, and they do not hesitate to pick apart the inner workings of cases or to cast aspersions on the motives of prosecutors.
Others said the Stevens case, along with the acquittal of former Puerto Rican governor Anibal Acevedo Vilá (D) last month, exposed deeper problems with a lack of supervision of the Public Integrity Section, which has experienced heavy turnover.
"In high-profile cases, particularly cases involving public officials, the vetting process has fallen down," said Thomas C. Green, a Washington defense lawyer who won Vilá's acquittal. "I think what happens is that they get caught up in the competition and there's no experienced voice of reason who says we cannot do this, we should not do this, we must not do this. These two cases could not have happened if the vetting process was in place and operating as it should."
But Gerald E. McDowell, who ran the Public Integrity unit for a dozen years, said that supervisors typically do not "nitpick" the work of their subordinates because there is not enough time, given caseloads.
In the Stevens case, signs of frustration began emerging early. At one pretrial hearing, defense lawyers hammered prosecutors with requests to produce thousands of pages of electronic evidence. Morris became flustered. "Just because he has 'U.S. Senator' before his name doesn't mean we have to drink out of a fire hose every time they call us," she said in court.
In another unusual twist, the conduct of public corruption unit lawyers was questioned by Chad Joy, an FBI agent from the Anchorage office assigned to help with the trial. In a 10-page whistleblower complaint, Joy reported seeing boxes of unprocessed evidence stacked outside Marsh's D.C. office, asserted that Marsh had misplaced a piece of evidence and lodged more serious allegations about failure to turn over materials to the defense. The complaint became public after the trial, fueling calls by Stevens's lawyers to overturn the senator's conviction.
Among other issues, Joy chronicled internal battles among the prosecutors about whether to turn over notes and argued that lawyers had delegated to his colleague, FBI case agent Mary Beth Kepner, the task of going over interview notes and deciding what should be redacted before handing the papers to the defense team.
Current and former prosecutors said it is highly unusual to delegate that task to an FBI agent because it involves legal questions and sensitive judgment calls for which prosecutors ultimately will be held responsible.
Compared with other Justice Department lawyers, those in the Public Integrity Section generally have been stingier about turning over materials to defense lawyers, former department attorneys said, and the section lacked clear rules on the question. It was a more difficult question in the Stevens case, with much of the evidence 4,000 miles away in Alaska.
One of the key questions now for ethics investigators and Henry F. Schuelke III, the special prosecutor appointed by the trial judge, revolves around a mid-April 2008 interview of the government's key witness, Bill Allen. Notes from that meeting in Alaska were uncovered earlier this month by the new Justice Department team examining the case, raising fresh questions about inconsistencies in Allen's trial testimony and prompting Holder to abandon the conviction.
"I always want to ensure . . . that if we make mistakes that we admit them, and that we then take the appropriate action," Holder said Thursday.
But, in a fashion befitting the strange and troubled course of the Stevens case, the people who are now the subject of "appropriate action" by authorities are the half-dozen men and women who prosecuted him.
Staff writer Del Quentin Wilber and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
April 12, 2009
By Carrie Johnson, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Justice Department team charged with prosecuting former senator Ted Stevens miscalculated by not seeking more time to prepare for the high-stakes corruption trial and fell victim to inexperience and thin staffing, which contributed to its alleged mishandling of witnesses and evidence, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawyers who followed the case.
Last year's compressed trial timeline forced government lawyers to jam their preparations into seven weeks and intensified a series of challenges: the late addition of a new lawyer; an aggressive adversary who deluged them with requests for documents; and a skeptical judge whose behavior turned unpredictable, then punitive.
The difficulties led U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan last week to dismiss a conviction against Stevens, a Republican who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate for nearly 40 years, and to turn the tables and initiate a criminal probe of six of the prosecutors.
Former prosecutors, defense lawyers and onetime Justice Department officials also described more chronic liabilities in the department's Public Integrity Section: Once the "A Team" for fighting corruption in state legislatures, judges' chambers and Congress, the unit in recent years lost staffing, strong supervision, some of its varnish and its insulation from politics.
Only days after the case against Stevens collapsed, lawyers inside and outside the department were chronicling its demise and picking apart the skill of the prosecution team, at least one of whose members had watched cases fall apart in the past. But government officials and defense attorneys alike said they do not think that prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section or its leaders acted out of base political motivations.
The Justice Department, already laboring under well-documented episodes of political interference during the Bush years, is now facing intense scrutiny over whether it flouted the rules in one of the highest-profile cases of the past decade.
Prosecutors and FBI agents are hiring their own lawyers and pointing the finger at one another, even as a special prosecutor and the department's ethics watchdogs are trying to determine whether members of the team broke the law to cheat their way to victory or merely succumbed to lapses of incompetence, inexperience or lax supervision.
The six members of the prosecution team declined to comment or did not return phone calls and e-mail messages left with them and their friends. But department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the unit has a solid record, having secured nearly 400 convictions since 2001.
"For more than 30 years, the Public Integrity Section has been effectively prosecuting public officials, regardless of political affiliation, who abuse their office and their obligation to the American people," Sweeney said. "Every day, in courtrooms nationwide, these prosecutors work under challenging circumstances to hold our public officials accountable for their conduct, and they will continue to do so."
The very nature of the section's mandate, to target corruption across the country, has posed recurrent challenges.
Former department attorneys, for example, cited chronic problems that have plagued the unit: competition and confusion with partner prosecutors in U.S. attorney's offices around the country. Federal prosecutors in the District, for instance, were consulted about the Stevens case starting in 2006 but declined to participate, thinking that the charges were shaky, according to sources familiar with the discussions. The assistant U.S. attorneys also considered overly aggressive the prosecutors' early plan, later abandoned, to get a warrant to search the lawmaker's D.C. area home, the sources said.
The government's path could have been eased had the U.S. attorney's office been part of the case, adding players who were familiar with the courthouse and the personality of the trial judge.
The Stevens case had been handled for years by Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke, two career lawyers from the U.S. attorney's office in Alaska, and two attorneys from the Public Integrity unit, Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan, whose prosecution of Alaska officials had led to charges that Stevens had failed to report gifts on his Senate ethics forms.
As the indictment loomed against Stevens last summer, authorities in the department's criminal division pondered whether to add a more magnetic courtroom presence to the team. Department officials decided to tap Brenda Morris, a feisty, sharp-tongued trial lawyer who had been serving as deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section, to put Stevens on the hot seat and to build rapport with the jury. But that required the other lawyers to spend hours schooling Morris on the nuances of the case, keeping them from tackling boxes of documents related to the case, according to sources close to the lawyers.
It was to be the most high-profile prosecution of Morris's career.
Four years earlier, Morris had run into trouble in a case she handled when a federal jury in Texas acquitted San Antonio criminal defense lawyer Alan Brown, who had been charged with tax offenses. In a subsequent civil suit filed by Brown, who alleged that FBI agents had wrongfully pursued him based on a sketchy account from his disgruntled secretary, the government ultimately paid Brown $1.34 million to settle the claim.
Brown and his lawyers say that Morris ignored warnings from local federal prosecutors who cast doubt on the credibility of a critical witness, an office assistant who peddled questionable information about Brown in a bid to win a reduction in the prison sentence of her boyfriend. A judge in San Antonio had thrown out the case before it went to trial, but an appeals court revived the prosecution, which Morris led.
"She is the race car driver who blew past the red flag," said Bill Reid, a lawyer for Brown in the civil wrongful prosecution case.
But last week, current and former colleagues of Morris defended her reputation and her ethics, saying they do not think that she would intentionally run afoul of the rules.
The Public Integrity Section has had five chiefs in six years. The latest is William M. Welch II, who was honored three years ago by the attorney general for exposing corruption in the Springfield, Mass., government. Welch, one of the six prosecutors now under investigation, did not play a major role in the courtroom during the Stevens case but took a more active posture after the judge raised questions about sharing evidence.
Indeed, during the presidential transition period, incoming Justice Department officials heard complaints about whether career lawyers properly understood their obligations to hand over materials to criminal defendants, prompting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last week to call for additional training and oversight. The Stevens case, perhaps the starkest example of the troubles, brought the severity of the problem into the national spotlight.
Former prosecutors described public corruption probes as particularly tricky. Defendants are used to seizing the stage, they generally have the money to pay for top-flight defense lawyers, and they do not hesitate to pick apart the inner workings of cases or to cast aspersions on the motives of prosecutors.
Others said the Stevens case, along with the acquittal of former Puerto Rican governor Anibal Acevedo Vilá (D) last month, exposed deeper problems with a lack of supervision of the Public Integrity Section, which has experienced heavy turnover.
"In high-profile cases, particularly cases involving public officials, the vetting process has fallen down," said Thomas C. Green, a Washington defense lawyer who won Vilá's acquittal. "I think what happens is that they get caught up in the competition and there's no experienced voice of reason who says we cannot do this, we should not do this, we must not do this. These two cases could not have happened if the vetting process was in place and operating as it should."
But Gerald E. McDowell, who ran the Public Integrity unit for a dozen years, said that supervisors typically do not "nitpick" the work of their subordinates because there is not enough time, given caseloads.
In the Stevens case, signs of frustration began emerging early. At one pretrial hearing, defense lawyers hammered prosecutors with requests to produce thousands of pages of electronic evidence. Morris became flustered. "Just because he has 'U.S. Senator' before his name doesn't mean we have to drink out of a fire hose every time they call us," she said in court.
In another unusual twist, the conduct of public corruption unit lawyers was questioned by Chad Joy, an FBI agent from the Anchorage office assigned to help with the trial. In a 10-page whistleblower complaint, Joy reported seeing boxes of unprocessed evidence stacked outside Marsh's D.C. office, asserted that Marsh had misplaced a piece of evidence and lodged more serious allegations about failure to turn over materials to the defense. The complaint became public after the trial, fueling calls by Stevens's lawyers to overturn the senator's conviction.
Among other issues, Joy chronicled internal battles among the prosecutors about whether to turn over notes and argued that lawyers had delegated to his colleague, FBI case agent Mary Beth Kepner, the task of going over interview notes and deciding what should be redacted before handing the papers to the defense team.
Current and former prosecutors said it is highly unusual to delegate that task to an FBI agent because it involves legal questions and sensitive judgment calls for which prosecutors ultimately will be held responsible.
Compared with other Justice Department lawyers, those in the Public Integrity Section generally have been stingier about turning over materials to defense lawyers, former department attorneys said, and the section lacked clear rules on the question. It was a more difficult question in the Stevens case, with much of the evidence 4,000 miles away in Alaska.
One of the key questions now for ethics investigators and Henry F. Schuelke III, the special prosecutor appointed by the trial judge, revolves around a mid-April 2008 interview of the government's key witness, Bill Allen. Notes from that meeting in Alaska were uncovered earlier this month by the new Justice Department team examining the case, raising fresh questions about inconsistencies in Allen's trial testimony and prompting Holder to abandon the conviction.
"I always want to ensure . . . that if we make mistakes that we admit them, and that we then take the appropriate action," Holder said Thursday.
But, in a fashion befitting the strange and troubled course of the Stevens case, the people who are now the subject of "appropriate action" by authorities are the half-dozen men and women who prosecuted him.
Staff writer Del Quentin Wilber and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Paul Minor Denied Release by 5th Circuit and Justice Department
Source: HUFFINGTON POST
April 10, 2009
Brendan DeMelle
Justice Department officials told the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday that the government opposes the release of Paul Minor, the prominent Mississippi trial attorney currently serving 11 years in prison following his selective prosecution by the Bush DOJ. The 5th Circuit moved quickly to deny Minor's motion for release.
Minor remains locked up in the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp while his wife Sylvia's condition continues to deteriorate. "Her demise is imminent," according to an April 4 report from the oncologist monitoring the progression of her terminal brain cancer.
The wording of the 5th Circuit Court's denial does offer a ray of hope that the two might be reunited, but only if the Obama Justice Department moves quickly to support his emergency furlough. The 5th Circuit response indicates that the judges deliberating Minor's appeal agree that he meets the requirements necessary for a temporary furlough. Different from the release on bail that Minor requested, a temporary furlough could be granted for a period of up to 30 days, allowing Minor to spend time with his dying spouse and to say goodbye in a dignified manner.
The Bureau of Prisons and the Warden could grant a brief furlough for a bedside visit with an armed guard, if deemed necessary. With any luck, the BOP and Warden will allow Minor an extended visit to love and comfort his wife and family under the 30 day furlough statute. Any sense of human decency requires no less - especially when there are substantial questions raised in Mr. Minor's appeal that will likely require reversal of his conviction.
Curiously, the 5th Circuit judges based their denial of Minor's release on Judge Priscilla Owen's previous denial last year of Minor's request for release pending his appeal. Judge Owen recused herself from Minor's case minutes before the appeal hearing began last week in Austin, Texas.
Owen's recusal was appropriate given her close ties to Karl Rove, who is currently under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee for allegedly targeting key Democrats for prosecution, including Paul Minor, and for his role in the ousting of U.S. attorneys who refused to carry out the partisan bidding of the Bush administration.
Rove was reportedly "very impressed" with Priscilla Owen's judicial philosophy when the two met in 1994, and he agreed to shepherd her onto the Texas Supreme Court, collecting nearly a quarter million dollars in fees in the process. Ever since then, according to The New York Times, Priscilla Owen has been "guided by the hand of Karl Rove."
In the Texas Supreme Court race, Rove helped Owen amass a war chest of over $926,000 in campaign contributions from Big Business and the ranks of the Texas GOP. Owen then obliged some of her biggest donors by ruling favorably on their lawsuits with amazing consistency. The watchdog group Texans For Public Justice reported "more than $500,000 (37 percent) of the $1.4 million that Owen raised for her two Supreme Court campaigns came from lawyers and litigants who had cases in her courtroom... Owen's 11 biggest litigant-donors (including Enron Corp., Farmers Insurance and Dow Chemical) appeared in her courtroom 26 times. While these big docket donors prevailed an enviable 77 percent of the time before the court as a whole, Owen was even kinder - favoring them 85 percent of the time."
(Ironically, prior to her election to the Court, Priscilla Owen wrote articles and lobbied the Texas Legislature to eliminate partisan election of judges, arguing that they hinder the ability of courts to provide impartial justice.)
A member of the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, Judge Owen was finally appointed to the 5th Circuit Court by George W. Bush in 2005. Congress blocked her first nomination in 2003. A contemporary New York Times editorial stated that Judge Owen's "ideology drives her decisions," and that her nomination was "not by chance," because the Bush White House sought out judges like Owen for their "aggressive conservative agendas."
Another editorial from Owen's hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, chastised her "clear preference for ruling to achieve a particular result rather than impartially interpreting the law."
A 2005 New York Times article characterized Owens' nomination as "the latest reward of a partnership that began a dozen years ago when a prominent Texas conservative introduced her to Karl Rove, who was at the time a political consultant and emerging kingmaker."
According to the Times article, "Ms. Owen, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove became close friends. Each year, Ms. Owen cooked a dinner of quail, a Texas specialty, for Mr. Bush, Laura Bush and other judges on the court, usually at Mr. Rove's home."
Given the near certainty that Rove was the chief strategist behind the Bush Justice Department's targeted prosecutions of Democratic fundraisers including Paul Minor, Owen's impartiality in hearing Minor's appeal was questionable, and she was correct to recuse herself. Why the 5th Circuit panel is relying on Owen's previous denial of Minor's release to deny him bail now is mystifying.
The Obama Justice Department should move quickly to review the circumstances of Minor's conviction. More immediately, given Mrs. Minor's condition, DOJ should grant Paul Minor an emergency furlough to say goodbye to his wife Sylvia.
April 10, 2009
Brendan DeMelle
Justice Department officials told the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday that the government opposes the release of Paul Minor, the prominent Mississippi trial attorney currently serving 11 years in prison following his selective prosecution by the Bush DOJ. The 5th Circuit moved quickly to deny Minor's motion for release.
Minor remains locked up in the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp while his wife Sylvia's condition continues to deteriorate. "Her demise is imminent," according to an April 4 report from the oncologist monitoring the progression of her terminal brain cancer.
The wording of the 5th Circuit Court's denial does offer a ray of hope that the two might be reunited, but only if the Obama Justice Department moves quickly to support his emergency furlough. The 5th Circuit response indicates that the judges deliberating Minor's appeal agree that he meets the requirements necessary for a temporary furlough. Different from the release on bail that Minor requested, a temporary furlough could be granted for a period of up to 30 days, allowing Minor to spend time with his dying spouse and to say goodbye in a dignified manner.
The Bureau of Prisons and the Warden could grant a brief furlough for a bedside visit with an armed guard, if deemed necessary. With any luck, the BOP and Warden will allow Minor an extended visit to love and comfort his wife and family under the 30 day furlough statute. Any sense of human decency requires no less - especially when there are substantial questions raised in Mr. Minor's appeal that will likely require reversal of his conviction.
Curiously, the 5th Circuit judges based their denial of Minor's release on Judge Priscilla Owen's previous denial last year of Minor's request for release pending his appeal. Judge Owen recused herself from Minor's case minutes before the appeal hearing began last week in Austin, Texas.
Owen's recusal was appropriate given her close ties to Karl Rove, who is currently under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee for allegedly targeting key Democrats for prosecution, including Paul Minor, and for his role in the ousting of U.S. attorneys who refused to carry out the partisan bidding of the Bush administration.
Rove was reportedly "very impressed" with Priscilla Owen's judicial philosophy when the two met in 1994, and he agreed to shepherd her onto the Texas Supreme Court, collecting nearly a quarter million dollars in fees in the process. Ever since then, according to The New York Times, Priscilla Owen has been "guided by the hand of Karl Rove."
In the Texas Supreme Court race, Rove helped Owen amass a war chest of over $926,000 in campaign contributions from Big Business and the ranks of the Texas GOP. Owen then obliged some of her biggest donors by ruling favorably on their lawsuits with amazing consistency. The watchdog group Texans For Public Justice reported "more than $500,000 (37 percent) of the $1.4 million that Owen raised for her two Supreme Court campaigns came from lawyers and litigants who had cases in her courtroom... Owen's 11 biggest litigant-donors (including Enron Corp., Farmers Insurance and Dow Chemical) appeared in her courtroom 26 times. While these big docket donors prevailed an enviable 77 percent of the time before the court as a whole, Owen was even kinder - favoring them 85 percent of the time."
(Ironically, prior to her election to the Court, Priscilla Owen wrote articles and lobbied the Texas Legislature to eliminate partisan election of judges, arguing that they hinder the ability of courts to provide impartial justice.)
A member of the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, Judge Owen was finally appointed to the 5th Circuit Court by George W. Bush in 2005. Congress blocked her first nomination in 2003. A contemporary New York Times editorial stated that Judge Owen's "ideology drives her decisions," and that her nomination was "not by chance," because the Bush White House sought out judges like Owen for their "aggressive conservative agendas."
Another editorial from Owen's hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, chastised her "clear preference for ruling to achieve a particular result rather than impartially interpreting the law."
A 2005 New York Times article characterized Owens' nomination as "the latest reward of a partnership that began a dozen years ago when a prominent Texas conservative introduced her to Karl Rove, who was at the time a political consultant and emerging kingmaker."
According to the Times article, "Ms. Owen, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove became close friends. Each year, Ms. Owen cooked a dinner of quail, a Texas specialty, for Mr. Bush, Laura Bush and other judges on the court, usually at Mr. Rove's home."
Given the near certainty that Rove was the chief strategist behind the Bush Justice Department's targeted prosecutions of Democratic fundraisers including Paul Minor, Owen's impartiality in hearing Minor's appeal was questionable, and she was correct to recuse herself. Why the 5th Circuit panel is relying on Owen's previous denial of Minor's release to deny him bail now is mystifying.
The Obama Justice Department should move quickly to review the circumstances of Minor's conviction. More immediately, given Mrs. Minor's condition, DOJ should grant Paul Minor an emergency furlough to say goodbye to his wife Sylvia.
Friday, April 3, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Jury clears PR ex-governor in corruption trial
Source: Associated Press
March 29, 2009
By Manuel Ernesto Rivera, Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)--A jury found Puerto Rico's former governor not guilty Friday on all nine counts including conspiracy, money
laundering and lying to the FBI, concluding his monthlong corruption trial.
Anibal Acevedo Vila, who could have faced 20 years in prison if convicted, was the first governor to be charged
with a crime since the island became a semiautonomous U.S. commonwealth in 1952.
Acevedo made the sign of the cross as he heard the verdict and began to cry, as did former adviser Luisa Inclan,
who was also cleared of similar charges.
Judge Paul Barbadoro faced both defendants after the verdict. "This case has ended. You are free to go," he said.
The acquittal is a major blow to the U.S. Attorney's office, which prosecuted the governor in an election year likely
contributing to his defeat in one of the most lopsided elections in Puerto Rican history.
U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said Friday that she respects but disagrees with the verdict. She also denied
that evidence was weak.
"The circumstantial evidence allowed for inferences to be made that the jury did not understand as such, but we
accept that," she said.
Jurors were not available Friday evening to explain how they reached their verdict.
Hundreds of Acevedo's supporters celebrated outside the courthouse, waving flags, singing, blowing whistles and
chanting "Innocent!"
Squeezing his way through the crowd, the ex-governor clutched a large Puerto Rican flag and jumped atop an SUV.
"I hope Puerto Rico learns from this lesson," said Acevedo, who also professed to having learned from his own
mistakes. "You defend the truth no matter what."
Current Gov. Luis Fortuno issued a brief statement asking Puerto Ricans to respect and support the jury's verdict.
Authorities last year accused Acevedo and 12 associates of participating in an illegal scheme to pay off more than
$500,000 in campaign debts.
One by one the associates began to plead guilty, leaving only Acevedo and Inclan to stand trial. One co-defendant
agreed to testify against Acevedo in exchange for having charges against her dropped.
Prosecutors presented some 30 witnesses, while defense attorneys surprised the courtroom earlier this week when
they rested their case without calling a single person to testify. Acevedo's lawyers urged the judge to dismiss the case
for lack of evidence.
In November, Acevedo lost to Fortuno in his bid for a second term. A month later, Barbadoro dismissed 15 of 24
charges against Acevedo, ruling that U.S. federal prosecutors improperly interpreted election laws.
A grand jury had added new charges in August, indicting him on four counts of wire fraud and one count of
conspiracy to commit money laundering.
March 29, 2009
By Manuel Ernesto Rivera, Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)--A jury found Puerto Rico's former governor not guilty Friday on all nine counts including conspiracy, money
laundering and lying to the FBI, concluding his monthlong corruption trial.
Anibal Acevedo Vila, who could have faced 20 years in prison if convicted, was the first governor to be charged
with a crime since the island became a semiautonomous U.S. commonwealth in 1952.
Acevedo made the sign of the cross as he heard the verdict and began to cry, as did former adviser Luisa Inclan,
who was also cleared of similar charges.
Judge Paul Barbadoro faced both defendants after the verdict. "This case has ended. You are free to go," he said.
The acquittal is a major blow to the U.S. Attorney's office, which prosecuted the governor in an election year likely
contributing to his defeat in one of the most lopsided elections in Puerto Rican history.
U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said Friday that she respects but disagrees with the verdict. She also denied
that evidence was weak.
"The circumstantial evidence allowed for inferences to be made that the jury did not understand as such, but we
accept that," she said.
Jurors were not available Friday evening to explain how they reached their verdict.
Hundreds of Acevedo's supporters celebrated outside the courthouse, waving flags, singing, blowing whistles and
chanting "Innocent!"
Squeezing his way through the crowd, the ex-governor clutched a large Puerto Rican flag and jumped atop an SUV.
"I hope Puerto Rico learns from this lesson," said Acevedo, who also professed to having learned from his own
mistakes. "You defend the truth no matter what."
Current Gov. Luis Fortuno issued a brief statement asking Puerto Ricans to respect and support the jury's verdict.
Authorities last year accused Acevedo and 12 associates of participating in an illegal scheme to pay off more than
$500,000 in campaign debts.
One by one the associates began to plead guilty, leaving only Acevedo and Inclan to stand trial. One co-defendant
agreed to testify against Acevedo in exchange for having charges against her dropped.
Prosecutors presented some 30 witnesses, while defense attorneys surprised the courtroom earlier this week when
they rested their case without calling a single person to testify. Acevedo's lawyers urged the judge to dismiss the case
for lack of evidence.
In November, Acevedo lost to Fortuno in his bid for a second term. A month later, Barbadoro dismissed 15 of 24
charges against Acevedo, ruling that U.S. federal prosecutors improperly interpreted election laws.
A grand jury had added new charges in August, indicting him on four counts of wire fraud and one count of
conspiracy to commit money laundering.
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