Stevens launches new push to dismiss case

In their latest call for a full dismissal of Sen. Ted Stevens's seven-count indictment, the Alaska Republican's defense attorneys accused the Justice Department Sunday of "intentionally" mishandling key evidence.

The latest charge came after the Justice Department provided Stevens's lawyers with a slew of new documents to comply with an extraordinary order issued last week by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. The judge said Monday morning that the trial against the Senate's most senior Republican will proceed until he receives more detailed briefs from both parties over the next day.

{mosads}"Until today, defense counsel have refrained from alleging intentional misconduct by the government," wrote lead defense attorney Brendan Sullivan, in court papers filed Sunday night. "We can no longer do so in good conscience."

Stevens is charged with seven counts of felony for failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from Bill Allen, the former head of the oil-services firm Veco, and other long-time associates. Stevens has pleaded not guilty to all seven counts, saying he paid some $160,000 in renovations but was never billed and never knew about other costs associated with his home.

According to Sullivan, the government concealed evidence showing that Allen, now the government's star witness, believed that Stevens would have paid if he had been billed. Sullivan also says new grand-jury transcripts show that Dave Anderson, a former Veco employee and nephew of Allen, was in Oregon when he billed Veco for his months-long work at the senator’s home in the ski town of Girdwood, Alaska.

The senator’s veteran attorney also argues the government holds a wealth of undisclosed notes from interviews and grand-jury transcripts “that cannot have been innocently withheld.”

“This case must be dismissed,” Sullivan argues. “No other remedy will deter future prosecution teams from engaging in the same tactics. No other remedy will prevent what has happened in this case from happening again.”

While the judge has previously resisted the defense team’s calls to dismiss the charges, he has grown increasingly frustrated with the government's handling of the case and said last week that he lost confidence in the Justice Department's ability to prosecute the case fairly. His concerns stem from the Justice Department's admission last week that it should have given the defense attorneys notes from an FBI interview with Allen and the government's decision to send a potential witness back to Alaska before speaking with defense attorneys.

In a reply brief, the Justice Department denied any intentional wrongdoing, saying the prosecutors have given the defense tens of thousands of pages of documents. The prosecutors suggested that any errors caused no harm to the defense's case but were the result of attorneys working "day and night" on an accelerated schedule to accommodate Stevens's request to conclude his trial before he faces re-election in November.

"Contrary to all of the theatrics and hyperbole from the defense, no one has attempted to hide evidence or hold back any discoverable item," the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section says.

"Having failed in his first and second attacks on the government's conduct in less than a week, defendant now attempts to look behind the scenes of the government's drafting and production, and he weaves from whole cloth a pure fiction about the government's conduct," said the brief, which was signed by Brenda Morris, the lead prosecutor in the case.