Holder appoints attorney to head ethics

Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday tapped a longtime U.S. attorney to head the office investigating the botched prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).   

Mary Patrice Brown, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s D.C. office, will be leading the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department. OPR handles allegations of misconduct by Justice prosecutors, and Holder has assigned it the task of investigating the Stevens prosecution.

{mosads}Brown is a 20-year veteran of the Justice Department whose past positions mostly focused on fraud and public corruption cases. She has also served on the D.C. Circuit’s Committee on Admissions and Grievances, which is responsible for investigating misconduct by private attorneys in D.C.

Before joining Justice, Brown was an associate at the local Dickstein Shapiro law firm from 1984 to 1989.

“Mary Pat has a stellar reputation and the highest integrity,” Holder said in a statement. “I have had the privilege of working alongside of Mary Pat in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia and she can always be counted on to do what’s right. I trust her sense of fairness and judgment implicitly.”

Holder announced last week that he was dropping charges against Stevens because prosecutors did not share information with Stevens’s attorneys that should have been granted to his defense. The 85-year-old senator lost a close reelection race to Democrat Mark Begich just days after the verdict.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the trial, has appointed independent counsel Henry Schuelke III to investigate the Justice prosecutors. Holder has said the department’s probe would proceed separately.