Stevens’s lawyers seek dismissal again

Sen. Ted Stevens’s legal team on Tuesday made another attempt to have his criminal case dismissed, restating arguments that the charges violate the Constitution.

In new filings, Stevens’s (R-Alaska) lawyers again claim the charges are unconstitutionally vague, repetitive and in violation of the Constitution’s speech-or-debate and separation-of-powers clauses. Recent filings by Justice Department lawyers have strengthened those positions because they have zeroed in on Stevens’s behavior as a legislator, his attorneys assert.

{mosads}In all, Stevens’s attorneys filed six attempts to persuade U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican. The filings were a rebuttal to Justice Department attorneys’ own rebuttal of the claims originally made by Stevens’s team last month.

Stevens, 84, faces felony charges for failing to report on his Senate disclosure forms more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from an Alaskan oil-services company. Stevens has pleaded not guilty to all seven charges. Last week he won a GOP primary for reelection, leaving only the general election in November.

The new filings repeat the claim that Stevens is being charged with legislative crimes — a violation of the constitutional separation between the executive and legislative branches.

Although Justice lawyers have been careful to emphasize their case against Stevens is not a straightforward bribery case, Stevens’s lawyers on Tuesday said that claim has been “polluted” and that “protected material,” such as his legislative activities, has been improperly shared with the grand jury.

“The government could well have indicted this case in a way that would present no Speech or Debate Clause violations,” the lawyers state. “Had the government brought a case, consistent with its representations to the court, limited to the financial disclosure forms, there would be no Speech or Debate issue. Instead, the government persists in polluting this matter with insupportable implications of a quid pro quo, and it apparently shared those implications with the grand jury by means of protected Speech or Debate material … Dismissal is the only appropriate remedy.”

The Constitution stipulates that members of Congress “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same, and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

Stevens’s trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 24. He has been granted an expedited trial schedule that could allow for a verdict before Election Day.