The U.S. Justice Department announced that it was dropping all charges against convicted former Alaska U.S. Senator, the late Ted Stevens. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that his office had uncovered prosecutorial misconduct in that lawyers for the federal government had failed to disclose notes from a witness interview that included exculpatory evidence that would have cast doubt on Mr. Stevens' criminal intent.

Mr. Stevens had originally been convicted of making false statements on his federally mandated disclosure statements about gifts. The government alleged he failed to disclose significant gifts he received from federal contractors that were related to the remodeling of his home in Alaska. Mr. Holder's decision was the end of the case. Mr. Stevens was nearly reelected to the Senate despite having been convicted of criminal charges just a week before the November 2008 election. He lost the election by just over 3,000 votes. Following the loss, he returned to private life in Alaska. Sadly, Mr. Stevens died in a plane crash in the rugged mountain area 350 miles south of Anchorage, Alaska, on August 9, 2010.

When Mr. Holder made his announcement of the withdrawal of the charges in April 2009 , he also announced that there would be a Justice Department investigation into the conduct of the lawyers involved in the case. In the hearing held in federal court to grant the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the charges, the federal district court judge ordered an investigation into the conduct of the prosecutors. That report, issued in 2011 , concluded that the prosecution of the late Senator Stevens was "permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated his defense and his testimony and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness."214 The report also concluded that there was "significant, widespread, and at time intentional misconduct" by the prosecutors."215 The 525-page report refers to "astonishing misstatements" by prosecutors as well as their failure to reveal the history of witnesses, including the fact that one of their witnesses had tried to obtain a false affidavit from a child prostitute in order to protect himself from prosecution. The prosecutors felt that the information would undermine his credibility and withheld it from Senator Stevens' lawyers. One of the prosecutors allowed a witness, who was a contractor who worked on the Stevens Alaska home, to give false testimony: that he had paid for the improvements to Senator Stevens' home when, in fact, Senator Stevens had written to the contractor/witness twice asking for a bill for the work on his home. \({ }^{216}\)..............................

Discussion Questions 1. What are the ethical duties of lawyers? Of prosecutors?
2. What are the rules of discovery for criminal and civil cases?
3. Mr. Nicholas Marsh, one of the prosecutors under investigation for the Stevens evidence issue, committed suicide in September 2010. Is there a credo moment for lawyers here?
4. Following the court report on misconduct, all of the lawyers involved had been working and continued to work in the Justice Department. Mr. Holder said that he has required additional training for the lawyers. Are there any ethical issues in having the prosecutors found to engage in misconduct still working there? In answering this question, think about this statement from a Wall Street Journal editorial on the prosecutors' conduct, "Americans hand prosecutors an awesome power-the power to destroy fortunes and futures, and in this case to reallocate national political power. We are seeing a pattern of abuse of this power in order to win big cases. [P]rosecutors [should] remember that their job is to do justice and not simply beat the defense team.