Important evidence was withheld, so the conviction needs to be overturned, but watch the blogs light up with "Why after the election?" "it was always a set up".

Sadly, had Stevens simply not moved his trial forward so quickly, it would have never taken place before the election. I bet that little fact won't be mentioned much.

right?

Now I suppose he'll run for the senate again?

Gee, I haven't heard a goddamn thing about the fact that Don Seigelman continues to rot in prison, or the rest of the non-Republican Party victims of the Bush/Cheney Justice Department. Sure is a relief, though, that Obama continues to know how to crawl on his belly and suck Republican cock in the name of "bipartisanship" though.

If Stevens were a Democratic senator, we could write the scripts for talk radio without any problem.

Given, however, that Stevens was a Republican senator prosecuted by a DoJ under a Republican administration, and the flaws in the prosecution have been set right by a Democratic administration, we're in serious danger of seeing an epidemic of right-wing head explosions like a chain of Black Cats going off all around the country. Their world-views simply can't accept these facts on face value.

My prediction: starting with Limbaugh and Hannity, we'll hear this: It's Clinton's fault.

As with so much else (according to the RW skewed view of things), Clinton essentially corrupted the mechanism of government (How, you ask? Simple: a radioactive-like effect--the man's mere presence was a corrupting influence! Very Greek-tragedy-like!) This corruption ran so deep and so strong that eight years of Republican cleanliness simply could not undo the pervasive stench and rot...hence, the flaws in the Stevens prosecution.

Why were these flaws undone by an incoming Democratic administration? Simple: the effect of talk radio. Rush and his cronies are so powerful that they have forced the Obama administration to come clean. And they must keep up the drumbeat of opposition in order to keep the Obama folks at least relatively honest. (Keep those cards and letters with money enclosed coming, folks!)

Thus we'll see figurative band-aids applied over the head cracks of the GOP, preventing that terrible plague of exploding craniums.

My wife is an appellate defense attorney. Prosecutorial misconduct is actually quite rampant and is certainly grounds for a mistrial and/or retrial. Regardless of how you personally feel about Ted Stevens and his guilt or innocence, this decision should be lauded. In fact, it should be taken a step further and used in discussion with so-called tough-on-crime conservatives as to why everything from the death penalty to a conviction of a petty crime should always be carefully scrutinized.

Enough of this crap about how Democrats are wimps because we follow the rules, like dismissing criminal prosecutions that are secured by gross prosecutorial misconduct, while Republicans don't. It's no different than arguing that we should torture Al Quaeda prisoners because Al Quaeda tortures ours. If you can't handle the notion that basic civil liberties are more important than political revenge, switch parties.

The Obama administration seems to have as much respect for the law as the Bush administration. Letting the crook Stevens off the hook is just politics at its worst. This is disgusting. I've stopped being a Democrat after many years of activism because I finally realized Democrats are almost as sleazy as republicans. Why bother to care!

@sirphred

Actually, reversing a conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct is the epitome of upholding the rule of law. Ted Stevens may be a crook, but he is still entitled to a fair trial.

Wrong! Innocent people deserve a fair trial to determine guilt. Ted Stevens was never innocent.

The Pinochet "too old" defense now joins the already existing too rich, too powerful, too necessary to national security, too white and too Republican defenses that currently prevent Holder from prosecuting the torturers and those who ordered torture.

Ted is about to escape a conviction, because the prosecutor withheld potentially exculpating evidence? In short, he's getting off on a technicality?

In Rightwingistan, if you get off on a technicality, it means all of the following:

A) you're guilty and should have been convicted.

B) that the justice system is overly concerned with defendants' rights, to the point that it can't effectively protect us good, upstanding citizens.

C) that the escapee could use some good, old-fashioned vigilante justice.

Five bucks says that none of the right wing chatterers are going to use any of these talking points this time around.

Right? Ha ha? Come on!

The Bush DOJ engaged in flagrant prosecutorial misconduct in order to ensure that no charges against Stevens would stick. They covered their tracks much better on all Democrat-targeted prosecutions.

If, as AG Holder says, there was prosecutorial misconduct, then a new trial is justified. To not pursue that trial strikes me as odd. It smacks of that two-tiered justice system Glenn Greenwald is always telling us about. One set of rules for common folk. Another for the powerful.

Perhaps there are details missing from the story that make it make sense, but on the face of it, it feels like Holder is letting Stevens off because he lost the election, i.e. he's suffered enough.

Not sure where the law is on "he's suffered enough," or the AG's discretion to make those decisions.

Sounds like bullshit to me.

Yep, I'd have liked to see Stevens convicted, but I do really believe that holding DAs/prosecutors to the letter of the law is FAR BETTER than letting them get away with ANY form of malfeasance.

There are few things worse than a fundamentally corrupt legal system, and we've been corrupting ours for quite some time. I want our prosecutors to be FORCED to strive for perfection.

Incompetence is one thing, but willful deceit on the part of prosecution is a terribly crime.

The only one to adequately determine guilt or innocence is through a fair trial. Nice try, though.

Based on Holder's action, that the DOJ believes that, with the exculpatory evidence included in the record, he would not be found guilty.

In other words, Stevens is as guilty of what he was charged with as Alex or I am.