Charges against Sen. Stevens make change of venue to Alaska unlikely

The legal scrap over where to try indicted Sen. Ted Stevens seems to be the battle that could decide the war.

A figure in Alaska politics since 1964, and a former Senate Appropriations Committee chairman who has steered billions of dollars back home, Stevens (R) is fighting his federal indictment by first fighting over where to challenge it. Attorneys are filing court briefs this week over the issue, and U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan will hold a hearing on the question next Wednesday.

{mosads}Sending the trial to Alaska, many observers believe, would amount to a near-automatic acquittal for the 84-year-old decorated World War II veteran. Stevens’s attorneys are fighting ferociously to make that happen, arguing in their Aug. 4 venue change request that the case’s “center of gravity” lies in Alaska.

But University of Alaska political scientist Carl Shepro said while Stevens is certainly well-known in the state, he is not necessarily beloved. Still, Shepro says he has been “amazed” at the number of yard signs supporting Stevens that have appeared in just the two weeks since Stevens’s July 29 indictment.

“It would certainly be much more in his favor. It’s not that everyone is maintaining a high level of support for him, but a large number of them are,” Shepro said. “He’s brought a lot of money and infrastructure here. He’s called ‘Uncle Ted.’ There is also opposition to him here, but he has a level of public support which I’m sure he doesn’t have in Washington, where it would be more hostile.”

The Republican senator was indicted last month by a federal grand jury on seven felony counts of filing false financial disclosure statements to conceal $250,000 worth of gifts from an oil services company.

He has been granted an expedited trial schedule, which could deliver a verdict by the end of October.

Stevens is running for reelection in November, although he must first win an Aug. 26 GOP primary.

Government attorneys filed an 11-page rebuttal to the venue-change request on Monday, arguing that the case should be tried in Washington, “where the crimes were committed, where the indictment was properly returned and where all the parties and their counsel are located.”

Sara Beale, a professor at the Duke University Law School, which publishes the Alaska Law Review journal, said courts have historically been unwilling to move trials based on negative pre-trial publicity.

But Stevens’s lawyers are arguing for convenience reasons — which requires Sullivan to weigh 10 specific factors, none of which are singularly determinate. That, in turn, makes it hard to predict what Sullivan will decide.

“Multifactor tests like this are generally more indeterminate,” Beale said. “It’s really a flexible standard that considers a lot of different factors.”

Some defendants have been unable to move their trials even small distances. In June, Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) failed in his bid to have his corruption trial in Washington, as his lawyers argued that there are more African-Americans in the District of Columbia than in the federal district centered in Alexandria, Va. That request was denied, and Jefferson’s trial is scheduled in December in Alexandria.

The Justice Department’s case against Stevens is different. Instead of a straightforward bribery case, government attorneys allege Stevens simply filed false financial disclosure forms while in Washington.

Scott Fredericksen, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and the Eastern District of Virginia, says that was a strategic decision that will likely win the day in the venue-change battle.

“They wanted a straightforward, slimmed-down, efficient case, and they wanted to hold it here,” Fredericksen. “Bribery cases are much more difficult to prove, and more complicated, and more likely to end up in Alaska. But a financial disclosure case is more likely to remain here, where they want it. Even though most of the witnesses will be elsewhere, government is likely to prevail on this. It was a very conscious decision to bring this type of case.”

Bribery cases became tougher for prosecutors after a February 2007 ruling by a federal appeals court that narrowed the legal definition of bribery. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court used the case of a former local police officer accused of bribery to establish that prosecutors must prove a corruptive influence on governmental decisions, instead of merely making money or misusing government resources.

Stevens’s other argument for a venue-change is that it would allow him to campaign in Alaska during the trial. Justice lawyers attacked that reasoning by including a photocopy of the front page of the Aug. 4 Ketchikan Daily News, which reported on a Stevens rally the day before in the Alaskan town. In the article, Stevens is quoted emphasizing that the case is about filing false forms, not bribery, and goes on to proclaim his innocence and suggest the real verdict is the general election. Justice lawyers say those statements are tainting a potential jury pool, and would only continue during an Alaskan trial.

Shepro, however, says Stevens is one of the few politicians in Alaska who could pull off a campaign victory in his home state while under indictment in the nation’s capital.

“I’m not sure he has to be here that much,” Shepro said. “You’ve got someone who’s a well-known personality, if not beloved, but everyone knows who he is. He could probably carry it without being here.”

Stevens’s two Washington attorneys, Brendan Sullivan and Robert Cary, are scheduled to respond to the government’s filing on Wednesday.