Unfortunately I don't live in D.C., so I couldn't attend these hearings. Fortunately the Legal Times has been providing excellent coverage. The latest:
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said Tuesday that in his 25 years on the bench, he had never seen anything approaching the "mishandling and misconduct" perpetrated by the government in the case of former Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens, who was convicted on corruption charges in October.
At a hearing Tuesday morning in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on the government's motion to dismiss, Sullivan said Stevens' case was symptomatic of a larger trend of misconduct. The judge urged his colleagues around the country to enter exculpatory evidence orders at the outset of every criminal case, and to require that exculpatory material be turned over in a usable form.
Hopefully other federal judges are paying attention. (My other posts on the prosecutorial misconduct that occurred in the Stevens trial are available here.)
