Judge refuses to seal probe of Stevens prosecutors

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments from four attorneys who prosecuted the late Sen. Ted Stevens to keep private a report that reveals details of their mishandling of the case, but said he will not hold them criminally responsible for their "ill-gotten verdict."

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered that a 500-page report into the Justice Department's botched corruption case against Stevens be released March 15, along with any written objections the attorneys targeted in the investigation wish to include.

Last November, Sullivan revealed that the special prosecutor he had appointed, Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III, did not recommend criminal charges against any of the federal prosecutors despite finding widespread misconduct, at least some of it intentional. In an order Wednesday, Sullivan formally confirmed that he is accepting Schuelke's conclusions.

Stevens was the longest-serving Republican in the Senate when a jury convicted him in 2008 of lying on financial disclosure documents to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations and gifts from wealthy friends, including a massage chair, a stained-glass window and an expensive sculpture. A few days later, Stevens lost re-election to the Alaska seat he'd held for 40 years.

Sullivan dismissed the conviction after the Justice Department admitted misconduct in the case, including withholding from the defense evidence favorable to Stevens. The withheld evidence included notes from an interview with the government's star witness that would have been favorable to Stevens' defense. The witness was Bill Allen, the millionaire founder of a major Alaska company that supported oil producers called VECO Corp. who testified that he oversaw extensive renovations at Stevens' home and sent his employees to work on it.

"The 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," Sullivan wrote. "That the government later moved to dismiss the indictment with prejudice and vacate the verdict months after the trial does not eradicate the misconduct, nor should it serve to shroud that misconduct in secrecy."

Sullivan ordered the criminal investigation into the six Justice Department attorneys who tried the senator as he dismissed the conviction. At the time, he said he'd never seen such misconduct in 25 years on the bench.