Ted Stevens – No Mistrial (Yet!) but Williams & Connolly are good.
OJ Simpson – Not Guilty (Yet!) but the jury is out.
The Washington Post and the Legal Times have the story of D.C. District Judge Sullivan’s harsh words for the Prosecution in the criminal case against Ted Stevens.
WaPo -
After a surprise revelation Wednesday night that Justice Department lawyers had not disclosed the potentially exculpatory information, the ruling followed a hearing on the matter late yesterday.
“Although the court is persuaded there is a . . . violation, the court is not persuaded that dismissal of the indictment or mistrial is the appropriate remedy,” said U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. He added that the government’s actions had broken his trust in the prosecutors and ordered them to give Stevens’s attorneys copies of all witness interviews.
“The court has no confidence in the government’s ability” to meet its obligations to ensure a fair trial, he said.
. . . .
The potentially exculpatory material involves remarks by the executive, Bill Allen, a key prosecution witness, to FBI Agents that he believed Stevens would have paid for the renovations if Allen had billed him. Attorneys for the government did not disclose those remarks to the defense until late Wednesday.
The chief of now-defunct Veco is a longtime friend of Stevens’s and had sought the senator’s help with company projects. Stevens, one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate is running for reelection to a seventh full term.
Sullivan said Allen’s information is not entirely new — prosecutors had previously summarized his views in a September letter to the defense — and noted that the defense can stress it when Stevens’s attorneys cross-examine Allen.
But Sullivan ruled that government prosecutors had violated a critical requirement that they turn over potentially helpful information to the defense. Prosecutors said they would report Sullivan’s finding to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which could begin an investigation of the government legal team.
For background information about the trial, the NYT has a convenient archive of Stevens articles here.
In other news – juror deliberations have begun in the OJ Simpson robbery case.
Interesting Time story about Yale Galanter, Simpson’s criminal defense attorney since 2000. Galanter has helped Simpson with
“a federal drug raid on Simpson’s home in 2001, a ticket for speeding in a manatee zone in 2002, a domestic violence call to his residence in 2003, and his participation last year in the writing of a fictional account of the murders of his former wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman.”
SCOTUS Blog also reports that Gregory G. Garre was confirmed as the new Solicitor General. Sounds like a pretty exciting job getting to be America’s top litigator.
According to sources in the Justice Department and Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate on Thursday confirmed Gregory G. Garre as United States Solicitor General.
. . . .
Garre argued five cases before the Supreme Court last term: for the respondent in Gomez-Perez v. Potter (06-1231) and Munaf v. Geren (06-1666); as amicus supporting the respondent in Board of Education of New York v. Tom F. (06-637) and Baze v. Rees (07-5439); and as amicus supporting the petitioner in Sprint/United Management v. Mendelsohn.
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