Senator’s Conviction Thrown Out
On April 1, 2009, the Justice Department made the shocking announcement that it would be moving to vacate the convictions of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The announcement stated that the move was made primarily based on prosecutorial misconduct within the Justice Department which helped lead to the convictions.
This move by the Justice Department should be applauded because we could not have expected anything like this from the Roberto Gonzalez Justice Department. This shows a level of integrity from our new Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, that we have not seen in a long time. It is unfortunate that we have come to accept as normal the politicization of the Justice Department and criminal prosecutions based on politics and political rivalries. It was not that long ago that Roberto Gonzales was under scrutiny for firing career prosecutors within the Justice Department for not being Republican enough. What is even more amazing is that people actually defended Gonzalez and felt that it was fine if our criminal justice system had a political bent to it. Well, thankfully, it is a new day at Justice.
The dismissal of the charges against Stevens came after an internal investigation at the Justice Department where it was discovered that the prosecutors in the case had withheld key evidence from the defense. The evidence could have exonerated the senator had it been brought to light earlier. It has recently been announced that a criminal investigation is being launched against those prosecutors. The problem now is trying to figure out how many other people were wrongly convicted under the Gonzalez administration and seeing that those injustices are corrected. For now, let’s just say that it is good knowing the era of corruption is over at Justice.
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