Prosecutors: Stevens guilt is ‘common sense’By ERIKA BOLSTAD and RICHARD MAUER (10/21/08 14:16:41) WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors appealed to jurors today to summon up their common sense and find Sen. Ted Stevens guilty of seven counts of deliberately hiding thousands of dollars of gifts, services and benefits on his annual disclosure forms. Look beyond his title of senator, said Brenda Morris, the lead Justice Department prosecutor on the case, as she concluded the government’s closing arguments in the case. “I ask you to do something that very few people have done,” Morris said. “Stand up to him. Behind all that growling, and all those snappy comebacks and that righteous indignation, he’s just a man. He should stand up and take responsibility like everyone who comes into the courtroom. Make him responsible.” But Stevens’ lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, accused prosecutors of offering a “twisted” account of Sen. Ted Stevens’ life over the past eight years. He told jurors that “you have an innocent man on your hands” and that government investigators have exaggerated the case against the Republican senator from Alaska. “If you look at life through a filthy, dirty glass, then the whole world looks dirty,” Sullivan said of the corruption case that the Justice Department brought against the 84-year-old Stevens. “You have heard evidence that this is a very decent man. Would he be involved in a conspiracy, year after year, covering up?” Yes, said prosecutor Joseph Bottini, who in his closing statements earlier in the morning argued to the jury that Stevens knew he was getting “substantial benefits” from his friend Bill Allen, the chief executive officer of the oil field services firm Veco Corp. Bottini and Morris split the responsibility of closing arguments for the prosecution, with Bottini taking the morning session and Morris ending the day. In between, jurors heard from Sullivan, who offered a theatrical, arm-waving defense in the morning but lulled the packed courtroom in the afternoon with a quieter plea that focused on Stevens’ character. Jurors will officially get the case Wednesday morning, after they receive instructions from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan. Prosecutors spent much of Tuesday arguing that Stevens was well aware that he should have but failed to disclose benefits from Allen, including renovations that doubled the size of his home in Girdwood. Bottini replayed a now-infamous secret recording of the senator, who told Allen on the telephone in 2006 that the worst that could ever happen to him as a result of a federal investigation would be a little jail time or perhaps excessive legal bills. “Does that sound like someone who really believes he didn’t do something wrong?” Bottini asked. Sullivan reminded jurors that in case such as this, where Stevens’ truthfulness is at stake, they can take into account the testimony of character witnesses. A parade of character witnesses, including Gen. Colin Powell, testified to Stevens’ truthfulness, character and integrity earlier in the trial. “The law thinks that a good life is worth something,” Sullivan said. “It permits that kind of evidence so that you can rely upon it when you have to go in that room to make a decision that affects his life.” Sullivan also used his time to focus on the same themes that he worked to elicit from Stevens himself when the senator took the stand in his own defense in the final three days of the trial. Stevens maintained throughout his own testimony that he didn’t want the things he was given and that he never received bills for some of the work done on his home, even though he asked for invoices. He placed the blame on his wife, Catherine, saying repeatedly that she was responsible for overseeing the renovations that led, in part, to his federal indictment. “They believed they paid their debts and they didn’t think they were getting anything for free,” Sullivan said. Again, prosecutors had a different take. “He testified here on Friday that his wife explained herself quite well,” Morris said of Stevens. “That woman, Catherine Stevens, is still recovering from the bus he threw her under.” Sullivan also worked to discredit Allen, whom he described as a convicted felon who’d made a deal with the government to save his own skin. Allen, who’s pleaded guilty to bribing state lawmakers in Alaska, testified in the Stevens trial and two others in exchange for leniency in his own sentencing and the promise that prosecutors wouldn’t bring charges against his children. “What will a man say on the witness stand to prevent his children from being charged?” Sullivan thundered from the courtroom. “Have you ever heard of a motive to lie worse than holding your family and son hostage?” Bottini, whose courtroom style was more matter-of-fact than theatrical, already had countered that argument, however, telling jurors that Allen may be rough around the edges, but that he also is a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy.” “Did it look like Allen was out to get the defendant in this trial?” Bottini said, referring to testimony in which Allen told the jurors that he admired Stevens, considered him a likeminded Alaskan and wanted to give him gifts to help him out. “If he were, then why would he say he wasn’t trying to bribe the defendant?” Bottini said. “If he were really trying to manufacture his testimony, wouldn’t his story be better?” Bottini also played another snippet of a conversation recorded by the FBI, this time between Allen and another of Stevens’ close friends, Robert Persons, a restaurant owner and neighbor in Girdwood who oversaw many of the renovations in question at Stevens’ home. “Ted Stevens knew that his friends would give, and he was perfectly willing to receive, because as two of his close friends said,” Bottini said, cutting to the recording of Persons saying, “Ted gets hysterical when he has to spend his own money. The flip side of it is he can’t really afford to pay a bunch of money.” Then Bottini added a phrase that he repeated throughout his statements: “The price is always right when it’s free.” The home renovation was worth well more than $100,000, Bottini said, and is at the heart of the case against the senator: seven counts of failing to disclose gifts and benefits worth more than $250,000 on his Senate forms from 1999 to 2006. He showed before-and-after shots of the work done on Stevens’ home, renovations that doubled the size of the A-frame in Girdwood. Some of the things Stevens was given were smaller than others, Bottini acknowledged, such as a stained-glass window and a generator. Jurors might question a “federal” case being made of such items, he said. But Stevens never disclosed any of those items as gifts on the senator’s financial-disclosure forms, Bottini said. And “how he treats these smaller items speaks volumes about how he intended to treat the bigger-ticket items, like the home remodel,” Bottini said. Stevens’ attitude was clear when he tried to figure out how to disclose the value of a sled dog that his friends bought him at a charity auction, Bottini said. Stevens, in asking about the dog, wrote an e-mail describing the disclosure requirements as a “GD” disclosure form. “He calls it his, pardon me, his ‘goddamn’ disclosure form,” Bottini said. “That pretty much sums up his attitude. He’s not above the law and he can’t evade it simply because he doesn’t like it.” |
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