NACDL - Prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens

Prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens

Senator Ted Stevens was prosecuted and convicted for criminal ethics violations, subsequently lost his re-election campaign, and, only shortly before his tragic passing, was exonerated after a whistleblower revealed that prosecutors withheld critical evidence of the Senator’s innocence in violation of his constitutional rights.

From the start, this prosecution was permeated with government misconduct, making it impossible for the Senator to get a fair trial. During a pretrial interview, for example, the government’s star witness made statements that would have been strong evidence for the defense to use at trial. The prosecutors did not, however, give this information to the defense. Instead, they covered up its existence and eventually procured a new and inconsistent statement from the witness. Also, during the trial, the prosecutors knowingly introduced false business records and refused to give the defense the grand jury testimony of another witness who had made statements helpful to the Senator, instead representing that the testimony was not “material.”

As a result of numerous egregious violations committed by the experienced prosecutors in this case, the Senator’s conviction was eventually dismissed. Ordering an investigation into the misconduct, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan explained that “[t]he government’s ill-gotten verdict in the case not only cost that public official his bid for re-election, the results of that election tipped the balance of power in the United States Senate.” The investigation cannot, however, undo the damage to the Senator’s reputation and legacy, all the more irreparable due to his tragic passing.

This page contains materials related to the prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens and the subsequent special counsel investigation into that prosecution. For information on NACDL's efforts to prevent future discovery violations, visit NACDL's Discovery Reform and Prosecutorial Misconduct pages.