Dismissal for Stevens, but Question on ‘Innocent’

Although this case represents some of the worst and most unfair prosecutorial misconduct I have ever known about, I cannot agree with Mr. Stevens’s chief lawyer, Brendan Sullivan (who is a great lawyer who some of you might remember represented Col. Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair; and I am proud to say attended mine and Sally's wedding reception years ago with his lovely and beautiful wife Lila), who says: “His name is cleared. He is innocent of the charges as if they had never been brought.”

From The New York Times:

When a federal trial judge tossed out the ethics conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens last week, his lawyers promulgated the story of an innocent man victimized by unscrupulous prosecutors.

But the five-week trial of Mr. Stevens offered a different version of him, and only a discrete part of that was directly affected by the discovery of repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct.

The disclosures that prosecutors had withheld information from the defense did little to erase much of the evidence that Mr. Stevens, who had been a powerful and admired political figure in Alaska, regularly and willingly accepted valuable gifts from friends and favor-seekers that he did not report.

Prof. Joshua Dressler of the Ohio State University law school said, however, that the failure to be convicted in a criminal trial does not, by itself, confer innocence on someone.

“The decision by the judge to dismiss the case is certainly not a statement that the defendant is innocent,” Professor Dressler said, “but that the prosecutors didn’t play by the rules, and for that reason alone we have to use this strong remedy” to deter other prosecutors from similar misbehavior.