Stevens judged by 2 juries, in trial and election

By TOM HAYS and MATT APUZZO – ASSOCIATED PRESS - Sunday  Oct 19, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens first took the witness stand, it was with his familiar vigor and spunk.

It would be "a privilege and duty" to testify, he told the judge in a firm voice. The senator then crisply recounted what supporters see as a personal history unparalleled in politics.

Later, however, in the midst of often arduous testimony about possible corruption, came this moment of imprecision from the 84-year-old lawmaker: "I can't read my own writing," Stevens mumbled, struggling to read aloud a note he had written a friend.

The conflicting snapshots of the longest-sitting Republican senator do not just matter in the Washington courtroom where he has been on trial for nearly a month on charges he lied about more than $250,000 in free home renovations and other gifts.

Stevens' performance during two days on the stand this past week — and at least one more day this week — could sway what has been called a second jury: the Alaska voters who on Nov. 4 will deliver a verdict on whether he should keep a position he has held for 40 years.

Like jurors, voters have to decide which Stevens they believe. It is the razor-sharp politician who easily gushed dates, facts and figures about a proposed Alaska natural pipeline? Or the agitated defendant who struggled to come up with an answer when teased by a prosecutor, "You can't remember when somebody put in a big, old bulky staircase at your house that you didn't ask for?"

With the polls close and Stevens stuck in the courtroom, his Democratic opponent, Mark Begich, has taunted him from afar. The Anchorage mayor accuses the senator of ducking debates and uses his legal predicament against him. Democratic ads pepper the Alaska airwaves, including one featuring dramatized FBI agents listening to the senator's calls.

"Something has gone terribly wrong," the narrator of one ad says. "Ted Stevens: It's not about Alaska anymore."

Stevens pushed for a speedy trial in hopes of clearing his name before Election Day of charges he purposely failed to disclose on Senate financial forms the renovations and freebies from his friend Bill Allen, the former chief of oil services company VECO Corp.

The senator says his wife, Catherine, paid every bill received by the couple for the modernization of their Alaska cabin — $160,000 in all. He also claims Allen kept the couple in the dark about the extent of the work and its cost.

The Alaska Democratic Party has dissected the defense, accusing Stevens' lawyers of trying to "razzle and dazzle" the jury by calling former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and other famous friends of the senator as character witnesses.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has piled on as well, urging voters in an e-mail message to vote for Begich so Democrats can reach a "filibuster-proof" majority — 60 Democrats.

"Ted Stevens will face two juries," Reid wrote. "The first will determine whether or not he is guilty of (corruption charges). The second will be the voters of Alaska, who have the opportunity to tell him they are tired of corruption."

Steven's campaign has countered by churning out news releases that make no mention of the trial. One carried the title, "Senator Stevens Does More after 5 p.m. than a Rookie Senator Could in a Year."

"My opponent is trying to convince Alaskans that I am no longer effective," the senator said in the release. Most loyal Alaskans, he added, "would disagree."

While on the stand briefly Thursday, Stevens offered autobiographical snippets that amounted to a 20-minute campaign ad. He described his childhood during the Great Depression, military service in World War II, crusade for Alaska statehood, the tragic loss of his first wife in a plane crash and four decades in the Senate.

On Friday, during hours of testimony, he was faced with the more tricky task of convincing jurors that a legislator known for clarity and tenacity was foggy about a project that turned his tiny A-frame cabin in Girdwood, Alaska, into a spacious two-story home with a sauna and wine cellar.

Stevens said he relied on Allen to oversee the project and, despite repeated confrontations, his friend refused to stop giving him gifts.

"You were the lion of the Senate, but you didn't know how to stop this man from putting big-ticket items at your home?" Morris said.

Also, the former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which controls the government's purse strings, struggled to come up with the word "budget" when explaining that he relied on a staffer to calculate his family's income and expenses.

"She was very good at it," he said.

At times, the senator grew testy and interrupted the prosecutor: "You're not listening to me. I've answered it twice," "I'm not going to get into a numbers game with you," and "You're making a lot of assumptions that are unwarranted."

While prosecutors are only playing to one jury, their tactics may have at times benefited Stevens with Alaska voters. Stevens' supporters say he is being railroaded by prosecutors run amok, and the Justice Department did plenty to bolster that argument, repeatedly being scolded by a judge for withholding evidence or otherwise impeding Stevens' defense.

David Dittman, an Alaska Republican pollster, said that after a year of constant media coverage about the investigation, the trial has only helped Stevens.

"Absent a chance to defend himself, he'd be much worse off," Dittman said.

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A Showdown, and Some Final Evidence, Before a Senator’s Case Goes to the Jury

WASHINGTON — The ethics trial of Senator Ted Stevens heads to what should be a dramatic climax on Monday: a courtroom confrontation between Mr. Stevens and a Justice Department prosecutor that features a crucial telephone conversation.

Over the last three weeks, a federal jury has heard testimony and seen evidence from both sides. But all of that could become secondary to what the jurors make of Mr. Stevens, who has made a calculated gamble in taking the stand as the trial’s final witness.

Mr. Stevens, Republican of Alaska, is charged in seven felony counts with deliberately concealing $250,000 in gifts and services from a once-close friend, Bill Allen, to renovate his house in Girdwood, Alaska. The government has asserted that Mr. Allen deployed his oil services company, Veco, to help remake the Stevens home from a modest A-frame cabin to a two-story residence with wraparound porches, a garage and amenities like an expensive gas grill, a workshop and a whirlpool.

Mr. Stevens, 84, spent Friday on the stand laying out his defense: he was unaware that Veco or its workers had provided any help in the renovation. He said he believed that the work had been done by other contractors whom his wife paid.

On Monday, the senator will be pressed hard with strong evidence to the contrary, including a secretly taped telephone conversation and a note in his own handwriting that suggest he was fully aware of the role played by Mr. Allen and Veco.

In his 40 years in the Senate, Mr. Stevens has come to be regarded as an irascible character, a reputation he accepts and may even relish, as he once described himself as “a mean, miserable S.O.B.”

Mr. Stevens reinforced that image on Friday in the 70 minutes he was cross-examined by the federal prosecutor, Brenda Morris, before court recessed for the weekend. His combative responses verged on the contemptuous, as he derisively told Ms. Morris that her questions made little sense. And his aggressive approach may have succeeded in disrupting any rhythm she had tried to establish in laying out the government’s case.

But Ms. Morris did not get to the most damaging evidence, which will almost certainly be used on Monday. In an Oct. 18, 2006, telephone conversation with Mr. Allen that the F.B.I. taped, Mr. Stevens freely discussed all the money Mr. Allen had spent on the renovation and his awareness of the legal problems that could be raised.

Mr. Stevens repeatedly assured Mr. Allen on the tape that he was entitled to spend his own money and that they did nothing wrong. “They’re not going to shoot us; it’s not Iraq,” the senator said, adding that, at worst, “We might have to pay a fine and serve a little time in jail.”

Mr. Stevens also repeatedly wrote notes to thank Mr. Allen for his work on the house. “I know you’re putting in more work than you’re saying,” he wrote in one.

The showdown on Monday will be followed by closing arguments. The jury will probably begin deliberations on Tuesday.

Prosecutors stumbled in presenting their case in the trial’s opening days. They were admonished by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan for failing to disclose information to the defense team as required.

But the government recovered strongly in its cross-examinations of witnesses presented by Mr. Stevens, notably making his wife’s testimony seem forced and implausible.

The government would like the jury to consider a simple and streamlined account of the case, while Mr. Stevens’s lawyers are likely to put forward a complex, even confusing, version.

In the prosecution’s simple version, Mr. Stevens used Mr. Allen as a free help desk. In one example that prosecutors presented, he wrote to Mr. Allen that his wife had hit her head on the roof of the home because “she feels the bed is too big.” Mr. Allen, in short order, bought and delivered a new bed at no charge.

In this account, Mr. Stevens received many things of value, did not pay for them and failed to record them as gifts on Senate disclosure forms as required by ethics laws.

The defense, seeking to plant and nourish reasonable doubt in the jury room, may be best served by a complicated account.

Brendan Sullivan, the chief defense lawyer, will probably remind jurors of the questions that the defense team has raised about the value of the work done by Veco, the notion that Mr. Allen’s “gifts” were unwanted and even a nuisance, and that it was Mrs. Stevens, not her husband, who was responsible for overseeing the project.

It is unlikely Mr. Sullivan will neglect to emphasize that Mr. Allen, the prosecution’s chief witness, has already been convicted of a scheme to bribe Alaska lawmakers (although he is unlikely to note that one of the legislators was Ben Stevens, the senator’s son).

Mr. Allen has needed to curry favor with prosecutors, Mr. Sullivan is expected to argue, for a lenient sentence and to obtain $70 million held back from the recent sale of his business on the condition that Veco remain unaffected by the investigation. In exchange for Mr. Allen’s guilty plea, the government has agreed not to prosecute his family members or Veco.

Mr. Sullivan is likely to dwell on Mr. Stevens’s accomplishments in the Senate, which the lawyer raised during the trial with character witnesses that included two other senators and Donna de Varona, an Olympic champion.

Trial lawyers generally discount the value of character witnesses. But the Stevens jury, made up mostly of black women, was visibly impressed with one: Colin L. Powell, the former Army general who was the first black secretary of state.