Judge in Stevens Case Starts Criminal Contempt Proceedings Against DOJ Officials

Posted by Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake at 10:28 AM on April 7, 2009.

UPDATE: Judge Sullivan announced today that he will commence criminal proceedings against DOJ attorneys on the Stevens' case:

Sullivan said today that he would commence criminal contempt proceedings against the original trial team and their supervisor, and appoint a non-government lawyer to prosecute the case.

That includes William Welch II, chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section; Brenda Morris, his principal deputy chief and former lead prosecutor in the case, public integrity prosecutors Edward Sullivan and Nick Marsh; and Alaska-based assistant U.S. attorneys James Goeke and Joseph Bottini.

The judge said that "the interest of justice" he would appoint Henry Schuelke III, name partner at Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler, to investigate and prosecute team for violating court orders and potentially obstructing justice.

An outside appointment of an independent prosecutor under these circumstances where conflict of interest is raised is not uncommon, but from what I've heard it was not announced prior to today's proceedings which is a little unusual. That says the Judge was pissed by whatever was in documents he ordered DOJ to turnover regarding further misconduct allegations that Holder found so objectionable when he issued his indictment dismissal.

Hold onto your hats, kids -- this just got even rockier for Justice.

The fallout from the Stevens trial debacle just keeps coming forward:

One F.B.I. agent, Chad Joy, has said in an affidavit that he sat in on meetings in which Stevens prosecutors were clearly aware that they were ignoring their professional obligations to turn over materials that the defense could use to counter the charges.

Agent Joy, who still works for the bureau, took the unusual step of asking the government for official protection as a whistle-blower. His 10-page affidavit has become an important part of the collapse of the case.

That this "clearly aware" violation of the USAtty manual occurred at all is appalling enough. That it came from members of the DOJ's Public Integrity section? I think Scott Horton says this best:

The whistle-blower's accusations in the Stevens case suggest a victory-at-all-costs attitude, which is difficult to reconcile with the section's ostensible purpose of upholding ethics....

The law applies to everyone equally, including those who have sworn to enforce it and uphold it in the execution of their duties. More so, in my mind, for prosecutors whose duty it is to not only enforce the law but see that justice is balanced against the facts, the evidence and the law.

Justice cannot be trusted if it comes from lawyers whose actions speak volumes in how they are willing to bend the law to their own ends. And if Justice cannot be trusted?  The system fails.

We have had years of this -- from the Yoo memos which ignored wide swaths of law in order to reach predetermined conclusions, to the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson for political payback regardless of the prohibitions against doing just that at the highest levels of government, to the politicized prosecution claims from Don Siegelman and beyond.  So much so that I continually wonder if this was the point -- to break Justice so that its mechanisms for prosecuting wrongdoers would be so in question at the very time when investigative and prosecutorial integrity within the system was most needed.

Restoring integrity to Justice is an unenviable task, because reversing this internal mindset of "ends justifies the means" will not be easy after years of it being shoved into place in an institution whose mission ought to have been exactly the opposite.

A hefty dose of sunshine -- from the Stevens case to the OLC memos -- would be an excellent start. But only a start.

Christy Hardin Smith is a former attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review.