No one is saying that Ted Stevens didn’t lie about unreported contributions.  But the government has to play by the rules even when the defendant is guilty.  In this case, federal prosecutors are accused of withholding potentially exculpatory information from defense counsel–it’s called a Brady violation.

The New York Times reported today that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is “replacing the top official of an internal Justice Department ethics unit investigating the accusations of prosecutorial misconduct that led to the dismissal of criminal charges against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.” 

This happened because Federal District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan made it plain that he had no confidence in the internal investigation the DOJ was conducting into the matter.  It also happened because, unlike his recent predecessors, AG Holder is concerned about the appearance of propriety.

If only we could see the same level of concern expressed for defendants several notches down the social ladder from a US Senator.

Case in point: the insane prosecution of black Little Rock attorney Alvin Clay.  In this case, a long string of men and women representing the government of the United States have revealed an utter disregard for the rules of the justice game.  Grand jurors have been lied to and the lies have not been corrected.  Weak-willed street punks like Donny McCuien have been pressured into bearing false witness.    Federal prosecutors knew their man was lying, just as they knew Rodney Hays had hopelessly mangled his maiden investigation as an FBI agent.  In both cases they reverently received fraudulent claims and gross misrepresentations as if they issued from the very mouth of God.

Or take the case of Ann Colomb and her three sons in Church Point, Louisiana.  Ann and the boys would still be doing time in a federal penitentiary if Friends of Justice hadn’t taken an interest in the case and two honorable inmates hadn’t stepped forward. 

These men exposed what Friends of Justice had long been asserting: a system of perjury mills operating within the federal prison system. 

As soon as the prison grapevine learned that federal prosecutors were investigating a given individual, identifying information (home town, physical description, habits, make of car driven, etc) would be hunted down by cooperating girl friends on the outside.  This precious information would then be hawked to inmates desperate for a time cut. 

There is no parole in the federal system.  The only way convicted drug dealers can cut time from draconian sentences is to rat out their friends.  When all of their friends have already been busted people get creative.  Federal prosecutors know they are playing with fire but they don’t care.  So long as their victims are low-status black people they can get easy convictions without producing real evidence. 

I am not claiming that all, or even most, US Attorneys tolerate this sort of behavior.  But when it happens (and it is happening all over the nation) there is no remedy.

In the Colomb case, the Department of Justice commissioned the FBI to perform an investigation.  Rumor has it that the only bad guys they have thus far identified are . . . you guessed it, the two guys who blew the whistle on their buddies.  It is reported that these hapless individuals are now being prosecuted for perjury.

This is a common prosecutorial trick.  First, you suborn perjured testimony by weilding arrows and extending olive branches.  Then, once you’ve got a signed statement, you threaten the poor blighter with perjury and obstructing justice charges if he suffers an attack of concience.  

In Lafayette, Louisiana, Tellis Vallier and five co-defendants were facing charges based on the same tainted testimony that nearly doomed Ann Colomb and her sons.  When Judge Tucker Melancon took his concerns about this fraudulent prosecutorial strategy to his superiors in Washington, federal prosecutors in Louisiana dropped all charges against Mr. Vallier.  But now that Judge Melancon has retired, the government is returning to its judicial vomit (check out Proverbs 26:11).

Without the principled behavior of judges like Tucker Melancon and Emmet Sullivan the kind of bizarre conduct Friends of Justice has encountered across the South will continue unabated.

It shouldn’t be up to judges to call the prosecutorial arm to account.  The Office of Professional Responsibility needs more than a new director; it needs a greatly expanded budget and a thorough overhaul.

April 9, 2009

Director of Ethics Office Is Replaced at Justice Department

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Wednesday that he was replacing the top official of an internal Justice Department ethics unit investigating the accusations of prosecutorial misconduct that led to the dismissal of criminal charges against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.

Mr. Holder named Mary Patrice Brown, a senior prosecutor and chief of the criminal division in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, to lead the Office of Professional Responsibility, succeeding H. Marshall Jarrett, its director since 1998.

Ms. Brown could play a role in presenting the findings of a recently completed inquiry into the conduct of department lawyers who provided legal advice authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Many lawmakers have condemned the practice and Obama administration officials, including Mr. Holder, have described it as torture.

A draft report on legal opinions dealing with interrogation was completed before President George W. Bush left office, but the department has not released it, despite repeated requests by two Democratic senators, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Mr. Jarrett is being named to lead the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, which coordinates departmental actions with the country’s 94 top federal prosecutors. Kenneth E. Melson will leave that job to become acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Melson is a veteran prosecutor with expertise in forensic science.

A Justice Department official said that the timing was unrelated to the dismissal of charges in the Stevens case and that the changes had been under consideration for some time.

The new assignments were announced one day after a hearing in which Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court, who presided over the Stevens trial, issued withering criticism of the Justice Department, expressing little confidence in the Office of Professional Responsibility’s inquiry into the case.

Underscoring his disregard for the internal review, Judge Sullivan took the highly unusual step of naming a private lawyer as a special prosecutor to conduct a separate criminal investigation into possible misconduct by six prosecutors in the trial.

Mr. Stevens was convicted last October of failing to report gifts from an Alaska oil field contractor. He lost his bid for re-election a few days after the trial.

In his remarks, Judge Sullivan blamed prosecutors for repeatedly withholding evidence from the defense. He also said he had seen violations of ethical rules by prosecutors in other cases.

The Office of Professional Responsibility was established in the 1970s to investigate accusations of ethics improprieties by Justice Department lawyers. Once the department’s pre-eminent internal watchdog, the office has gradually taken a secondary role to the Office of the Inspector General, but still conducts politically relevant inquiries.