For eight years the Bush Justice Department
cynically put politics and ideology above the law. So it is gratifying
to see how Attorney General Eric Holder is handling the case against
Ted Stevens, the former Alaska senator who was convicted last year on
seven felony counts of ethics violations.
Mr. Holder announced this week
that he would ask a judge to drop all charges against Mr. Stevens, a
Republican, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Holder should
ensure that the Justice Department gets to the bottom of what went
wrong and subject other cases that have raised red flags to similar
scrutiny.
Mr. Stevens was convicted of making false statements on
Senate disclosure forms to hide an estimated $250,000 in home
renovations and gifts, many from Bill Allen, an old friend with close
ties to his state’s oil industry. The Justice Department says that
prosecutors failed to turn over to the defense notes from an interview
with Mr. Allen, a prime witness in the case, which conflicted with
parts of his trial testimony.
Prosecutors are legally required
to turn over evidence in their possession that would help a defendant
prove his innocence. This revelation is only the latest in a series of
instances in which Mr. Stevens’s prosecutors appear to have acted
wrongly.
The prosecutors’ bad acts do not necessarily mean that
Mr. Stevens was innocent of misusing his office. But in light of the
prosecutorial wrongdoing, and the fact that Mr. Stevens lost his Senate
seat last November, Mr. Holder was right not to choose to retry the
case.
Mr. Holder, whose department is continuing to investigate
the Stevens prosecution, now needs to determine whether the
prosecutors’ conduct was so egregious that they should face their own
ethics charges.
He should not stop with this case. Don
Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, and Paul Minor, a prominent
Mississippi trial lawyer, have charged that Justice Department
prosecutors engaged in unethical behavior in cases that led to their
convictions. Both men claim that they were singled out for prosecution
because of their affiliation with the Democratic Party.
Given the
flagrant partisanship of the Bush Justice Department, it is especially
reassuring to see Mr. Holder ignore party lines to do the right thing
by Mr. Stevens. It has been far too long since the attorney general
seemed interested in enforcing ethics and nonpartisanship in a
department that has been shockingly lacking in both.
