Stevens corruption case goes to jury

Anchorage Daily News | October 22, 2008

By Richard Mauer and Erika Bolstad | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Stevens’ fate is now in the hands of jurors.

“The case is yours,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told them Wednesday.

The jury began deliberating shortly after Sullivan read through 81 pages of instructions. The judge spent just over an hour Wednesday morning reading through the elements of the alleged crimes, which detail which conclusions jurors must reach to find the 84-year-old Alaska Republican guilty of lying on his Senate financial-disclosure forms.

The first count alleges that Stevens engaged in a scheme to conceal information on his forms. To find him guilty, jurors will have to agree unanimously that Stevens knowingly engaged in such a scheme.

The other six counts require them to find that Stevens made false statements on his disclosure forms, in response to the question of whether he knew that he’d been given gifts in excess of the Senate limit from 2000 to 2006 and failed to report them. Those gift limits were $260 in 2000 through 2002, $285 in 2003 and $305 from 2004 to 2006.

Each felony count carries a punishment of up to five years in federal prison, although jurors are forbidden from considering potential punishment when they decide the senator’s guilt or innocence.

The jurors may be unaware of the importance of their decision, since nothing has been said during the proceedings that would suggest that Stevens is up for re-election this year.

The outcome of the jury’s decision probably will seal Stevens’ fate at the polls, however. On Nov. 4, he faces Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat. Stevens has been in the courtroom for the past month as the campaign has gone on without him in Alaska.

Sullivan also told the jurors that they may consider character witnesses in determining the senator’s guilt. The role of character witnesses is so important in a case based on Stevens’ truthfulness that their testimony alone can be considered to raise a reasonable doubt of guilt in the minds of jurors.

Sullivan also cautioned them about Bill Allen, the star witness in the trial and a former close friend of the senator. Allen, the former chief executive officer of Veco Corp., pleaded guilty last year to bribing state lawmakers as part of a sweeping investigation into corruption in Alaska politics. Allen agreed to cooperate in the investigation. Many of the gifts Stevens is accused of accepting, including home renovations valued at more than $100,000, came from Allen or Veco.

Witnesses who’ve entered into plea agreements are under the same obligation to tell the truth as any other witness, the judge warned, adding that Allen’s guilty plea to bribing state lawmakers in Alaska has no connection to this case.

“Those charges have nothing to do with Senator Stevens,” Sullivan said.

It’s up to jurors to weigh Allen’s biases and interests against those of other witnesses who testified in the trial, Sullivan said.

Jurors are allowed to consider several other alleged acts as evidence of motive, although Stevens wasn’t charged with any crimes in connection with those acts. They include accepting a loan from a friend for a real estate deal and failing to report it, asking Allen to help his son and grandson find jobs and accepting a generator from Allen.

Those acts may be considered for “proof of motive, intent, opportunity, preparation, plan, knowledge, or absence of mistake or accident,” Sullivan said.