"I bear no animosity toward the prosecutors, even though they pursued false charges based on fabricated evidence."

Ben Kuehne is the only person I know who could say such a thing and actually mean it.  Ben is quoted in Jay Weaver's article about John Sellers, who prosecuted Ben and who also prosecuted banker Sergio Masvidal. 

Masvidal was represented by Joe DeMaria, who was able to get his client's name cleared.  Although OPR concluded that his conduct was "reckless," the Justice Department let him keep his job:

Five years after unsuccessfully targeting two prominent Miami figures — one a banker, the other a lawyer — in separate cases, a Justice Department prosecutor faces a July disciplinary trial by Maryland Bar regulators.


John W. Sellers left the Justice Department in 2010 amid an internal probe concluding that he committed “reckless” misconduct in a money-laundering case against Miami-based American Express Bank International, which was headed by banker Sergio Masvidal.
***
Masvidal’s Miami lawyer, Joseph DeMaria, said the Justice Department should have fired Sellers after concluding that he had committed reckless misconduct, according to the agency’s internal probe in 2010.

Sellers now works as a Treasury Department attorney on the federal bailout program for the banking industry.

“The Justice Department let him sneak out the back door to the Treasury Department so he could keep his same salary, benefits and pension,” DeMaria said. “And now he’s working as an attorney on the federal bailout. How ridiculous is that?”

Indeed. 

The article ends with this quote from Ben:  “Lawyers reap what they sow. He will need to answer for his own conduct.”   But prosecutors who engage in misconduct rarely have to answer for their conduct.  That's part of the problem.  OPR rarely does anything, and the few times it does do something, it's a slap on the wrist.  See, e.g., Ted Stevens' prosecutors. 


In this case, the Maryland Bar has initiated a case against Sellers, so it will be interesting to see what happens. (Here's the Maryland complaint).  The problem is that even when the Bar tries to disclipline prosecutors, DOJ claims that they are immune even from Bar rules, and of course, civil remedies are not available.

"In 25 years on the bench I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case."

That was Judge Emmet Sullivan today, ordering a probe into the Ted Stevens case. Here's the AP. The coverage of the case is worth a read. From the article:

During Tuesday's hearing, Sullivan read a primer on criminal procedure, the kind of rudimentary lecture students normally receive during their first year of law school.
The judge said he has seen a troubling trend of prosecutors withholding evidence in cases against people ranging from Guantanamo Bay detainees to public officials such as Stevens. He called on judges nationwide to issue formal orders in all criminal cases requiring that prosecutors turn over evidence to defendants.
It was a stinging rebuke of the Justice Department and Sullivan called on Holder to order training for all prosecutors.

In (misconduct) news closer to home, a large internet pharmacy case was dismissed in Judge Zloch's courtroom today. You remember this one -- it's the Google jury... Here's coverage by the Health Care Fraud Blog:

In a stunning development with implications in two large prosecutions, the United States dismissed with prejudice an Indictment against 10 individuals today in a South Florida courtroom, two of whom had already plead guilty and testified in the trial against the other eight defendants. This follows an eight week trial featuring two mistrials, one based on prosecutorial misconduct and also included accusations against the government of witness tampering and the testimony of a federal prosecutor to attempt to refute the testimony that the government gave permission for one of the defendants to operate his business.

A new day

Maybe the Obama Justice Department means business: it is dropping its case against Sen. Ted Stevens because prosecutors withheld evidence. Here's the AP article. Perhaps this will send a strong message to line prosecutors around the country that Brady material should be disclosed. From the article:

The Justice Department said Wednesday it would drop corruption charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens because prosecutors withheld evidence from the senator's defense team during his trial.
The reversal is an embarrassment for the department, which won a conviction against the Alaska Republican in October and is now asking to overturn it.
The week after his conviction, Stevens lost his Senate seat in the November election. The patriarch of Alaska politics since before statehood, Stevens, 85, was also the longest serving Republican senator.
***
In court filings, the Justice Department admitted it never turned over notes from an interview with the oil contractor, who estimated the value of the renovation work as far less than he testified at trial.
"I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement released Wednesday. He said the department must ensure that all cases are "handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice."
The Justice Department is investigating the conduct of the prosecutors who tried the Stevens case.
***
In December, Stevens asked a federal judge to grant him a new trial or throw out the case, saying his trial had many deficiencies.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan held Justice Department lawyers in contempt in February for failing to turn over documents as ordered. He called their behavior "outrageous."
Sullivan had ordered Justice to provide the agency's internal communications regarding a whistle-blower complaint brought by an FBI agent involved in the investigation of Stevens. The agent objected to Justice Department tactics during the trial, including failure to turn over evidence and an "inappropriate relationship" between the lead agent on the case and the prosecution's star witness.

I'm happy for Stevens and his lawyers (from my old law firm Williams & Connolly), but dropping the case now doesn't put Stevens back in the same position he was in. He lost his Senate seat. His reputation has been ruined. He had to pay for a very expensive criminal trial.