In a hearing today on the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the charges against Alaska senator Ted Stevens, the judge harshly rebuked the Justice Department and noted that he saw a broader troubling trend. The AP story (from Talking Points Memo) reports all this:
“In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said in the opening moments of a hearing.
Sullivan read a stinging summary of the many times the government withheld evidence or mishandled witnesses in the case. …During Tuesday’s hearing, Sullivan read a primer on criminal procedure, the kind of rudimentary lecture students normally receive during their first year of law school.
The judge said he has seen a troubling trend of prosecutors withholding evidence in cases against people ranging from Guantanamo Bay detainees to public officials such as Stevens. He called on judges nationwide to issue formal orders in all criminal cases requiring that prosecutors turn over evidence to defendants.
Good.
Now remember these? :
http://www.folo.us/2008/11/21/mississippis-senators-pay-tribute-to-ted-stevens/#comments
http://www.folo.us/2008/08/11/what-does-ted-stevens-have-to-do-with-don-diegelman-and-paul-minor/#comments
http://www.folo.us/2008/10/27/ted-stevens-guilty-on-all-seven-counts/#comments
Yeah, Kingfish, and I just re-read them and don’t see a word of mine (in the one post and one comment I wrote, both in the first link) that I’d regret based on intervening events. So I guess I’d ask what your point is?
The justice department overreached and did wrong, and it was far from the only time in the Bush years. What they did probably changed the result in a Senate race. And I still think the gushing tributes to Stevens were embarrassing given who and what he has been as a public figure.
Just the Bush years?
the DoJ has had a history of overreaching for some time.
Am having some fun with you about the old posts.
The Bush years have been worse. There’s a trend of federalising everything, and there’s way too much leaving of certain kinds of corruption and fraud to the feds, and that goes farther back, but the problems of the Bush admin have been that plus more, in the politicization of the department.
I agree NMC: DOJ became an important and significant political wing of the Bush White House.
While I beleive that the Feds absolutely did wrong, Stevens still is guilty as all get out of receiving, keeping and not reporting gifts. Maybe not illegal, but most assuredly unethical. He’s not just some poor, innocent guy caught up in a witch hunt playing the martyr he may wish people to view him as. He’s just an old man catching a lucky break because the Feds overplayed their hand.
His faith in the justice system may be restored: but mine isn’t. Most certainly not by this kinda crap. And now they want him to be govenor. You can’t make this stuff up.
Bingo, Razor.