U.S. will drop Stevens charges

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has moved to dismiss former Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens' indictment, effectively voiding his conviction Oct. 27 on seven counts of filing false statements on his Senate financial-disclosure forms.

"After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement released yesterday. "In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial."

The Justice Department filed its motion to dismiss the case yesterday morning.

Within days of his conviction, Stevens, 85, lost his reelection bid to Anchorage's Democratic former mayor, Mark Begich.

Since Stevens was convicted, his lawyers have filed several motions to dismiss his original indictment or to grant him a new trial. Their motions have been based in part on allegations in a whistle-blower complaint by an Anchorage FBI agent, along with other allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that were released after Stevens was convicted.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who oversaw the case, scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on the motion to dismiss the indictment.

"I always knew that there would be a day when the cloud that surrounded me would be removed. That day has finally come," Stevens said in a statement released by his lawyers. "It is unfortunate that an election was affected by proceedings now recognized as unfair."

In a statement, Stevens' attorneys, Brendan Sullivan and Robert Cary, praised the Justice Department decision.

"This jury verdict was obtained unlawfully," they said.

The Stevens case, the government's highest-profile attack on congressional corruption in recent years, was plagued by problems.

The last straw, apparently, was prosecutors' failure to turn over notes of a key interview in which a witness made a statement he contradicted later under oath at trial.

Stevens, who served 40 years as senator, was convicted of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from oil contractor Bill Allen.

In a court filing yesterday, Justice Department lawyer Paul O'Brien, who has been handling postconviction matters in the Stevens case, told the judge the department recently discovered prosecutors' notes from an April 2008 interview with Allen, a key witness against Stevens.

The notes indicate that Allen said he did not recall talking to a mutual friend, Bob Persons, about Stevens' request to be billed for the work Allen's firm did at the senator's Alaska house.

When he testified at the trial, Allen said that he did have such a conversation - and that Persons had said Stevens was just "covering his ass" and really did not want to be billed for the work.

Under trial rules, such contradictory statements must be given to the defense team, and they weren't.

That information could have been used when Stevens' lawyers cross-examined Allen, O'Brien noted, or in their closing statement.

The trial and its aftermath were beset by similar government missteps, infuriating Sullivan. He held Justice Department lawyers in contempt in February for failing to turn over documents in the whistle-blower complaint as ordered and called their behavior "outrageous."

Holder said his department's Office of Professional Responsibility "will conduct a thorough review of the prosecution of this matter."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, called the Justice Department's move "a relief to Stevens and his family."

He said, however, that had the Justice Department acted last year, before the election, Republicans might not have lost the seat. That would have given Democrats - who have 58 Senate seats - one fewer seat toward a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority.

Stevens' replacement, Begich, said in a statement that "the decision by President Obama's Justice Department to end the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens is reasonable."

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who assumed Stevens' role as the senior senator from Alaska, said she was "deeply disturbed that the government can ruin a man's career and then say, 'Never mind.' "