Probe shows inadequate review in Ted Stevens case
WASHINGTON -- An investigation of the bungled criminal prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens has concluded that prosecutors never conducted a comprehensive review of material favorable to the senator.
A report released Thursday from a special counsel says agents of the FBI and Internal Revenue Service conducted an inadequate review of documents in the Stevens case. The report says some of the agents were unfamiliar with the facts or were unfamiliar with legal requirements about turning over material to Stevens' legal team.
The investigation by special counsel Henry F. Schuelke III revealed that prosecutors also failed to review their own notes of witness interviews containing significant information that was never disclosed to lawyers for the senator.
"Not only was the ... review unsupervised, the prosecutors themselves were unsupervised," Schuelke's report said.
Handwritten notes taken by prosecutors and two FBI agents during interviews with two key witnesses contained significant information that "was never disclosed to Senator Stevens' attorneys," Schuelke's report stated.
A jury convicted Stevens in October 2008 of seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure documents to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations and gifts from wealthy friends, including a massage chair, a stained-glass window and an expensive sculpture. A few days later, Stevens lost re-election to the seat he'd held for 40 years, making him the longest-serving Republican in the Senate at the time.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the conviction in April 2009 after the Justice Department admitted misconduct in the case. Stevens died in a plane crash on August 9, 2010.
Stevens' attorney Brendan Sullivan "was not aware when he gave his opening statement, and never learned during or after the trial, that the prosecutors possessed evidence that directly corroborated Sen. Stevens' defense," the report said. "The prosecutors never disclosed" that the foreman for the renovation "had the same understanding and belief as Sen. Stevens and his wife."
The government's star witness, Bill Allen, the millionaire founder of an Alaska company that supported oil producers called VECO Corp., testified that he oversaw extensive renovations at Stevens' home and sent his employees to work on it. Stevens' defense was that the senator and his wife understood that VECO's costs for its employees' work on the renovation were included in the bills the senator received.