Prosecution rests, Stevens’s team readies defense

Sen. Ted Stevens's defense team is foreshadowing its legal strategy, signaling it wants to call 10 witnesses to vouch for the Alaska Republican's character and a high-profile attorney retained by Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and former NFL star Michael Vick to impugn the credibility of the government’s star witness.

The Justice Department rested its case Thursday afternoon after it was allowed to call an additional witness, Dave Anderson, who worked extensively in 2000 and 2001 on the senator’s home remodeling project that is central to the criminal trial.

{mosads}The judge presiding over the case on Thursday afternoon rejected a motion by defense lawyers to acquit Stevens on the grounds that the government failed to gather enough evidence to prove the senator is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The government presented dozens of witnesses, hundreds of exhibits and several taped phone calls to build their case that Stevens intentionally hid from the public home renovations and gifts worth more than $250,000. Now the senator’s defense team will try to show him as an honest man devoted to serving Alaska’s interests for four decades in the Senate. Stevens, 84, has denied seven felony charges of making false statements, saying he paid every bill he was given.

“The senator’s lived a long life, he’s lived in many communities and there are many communities in which we’d like to present his reputation for truthfulness,” defense attorney Robert Cary told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday, outside of the presence of the jury.

Cary pledged he would move quickly through those witnesses, but Sullivan suggested that allowing 10 character witnesses to testify is excessive.

“I recognize that character witnesses can be very powerful,” Sullivan said, but he said it was “highly doubtful” he would allow 10 to testify.

The first character witnesses on Thursday will likely be eight-term Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), Stevens’s closest friend in the upper chamber, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Also, Stevens’s team wants to call William “Billy” Martin, a Washington-based attorney who has represented Vick, Craig, the mother of Monica Lewinsky and NBA star Allen Iverson.

Martin would be used by the defense to damage the credibility of Bill Allen, the government’s star witness, who paid for a bulk of the home renovations at Stevens’s home. The defense wants to show that Allen testified against Stevens after making an extraordinary arrangement with the government to sell his oil company, Veco Corp., for a handsome profit.

But Sullivan is not yet sold on whether Martin should be allowed to testify.

“I don’t think you need Billy Martin to come into the courtroom and dazzle the jury about that,” the judge said.

Even if the judge forces the defense to alter its strategy, Sullivan is prepared to tell the jury that the government mishandled key evidence prior to the case, a move that could hurt prosecutors’ credibility.