Steve Levin

In 2004, the then-US Attorney for the District of Maryland famously wrote in a leaked email that he wanted three front-page indictments by November of that year. Though open to interpretation, the impression left by the poorly-drafted missive is that prosecutors should seek headlines rather than justice.

Let’s give credit to the prosecutors involved in the Petraeus/ Broadwell affair, er, matter for their exercise of sound discretion.

Assuming the accuracy of the news reports, Paula Broadwell potentially subjected herself to indictment for any number of federal crimes. In his paper entitled Computer and Internet Crime, G. Patrick Black, a federal defender in Texas, analyzes a number of cyberstalking statutes. As Black writes:

Under 18 U.S.C. 875(c), it is a federal crime to transmit any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure the person of another. Section 875(c) applies to any communication actually transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce – thus it includes threats transmitted in interstate or foreign commerce via the telephone, e-mail, beepers, or the Internet. Title 18 U.S.C. 875 is not an all-purpose anti-cyberstalking statute.

First, it applies only to communications of actual threats. Thus, it would not apply in a situation where a cyberstalker engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to harass or annoy another (absent some threat). Also, it is not clear that it would apply to situations where a person harasses or terrorizes another by posting messages on a bulletin board or in a chat room encouraging others to harass or annoy another person.

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Rep. Gohmert/gov photo

WASHINGTON -- The prosecutors who concealed evidence to score a conviction against the late Sen. Ted Stevens should be disbarred, officials said at a congressional hearing Thursday.

“I don’t believe that the people that took Ted Steven’s life, how they should ever be able to practice law again,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who added that he didn’t personally like Stevens, but felt the prosecution was an injustice.

A federal jury convicted in the Alaska senator of felony corruption in 2008 for lying about home renovations and other gifts he had received from executives of VECO Corp., an oil field services company.

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Ex-Sen. Ted Stevens

WASHINGTON – The federal government has spent nearly $1.8 million defending prosecutors from allegations they broke the law in the botched corruption case against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, Justice Department records show.

The case against Stevens fell apart three years ago when the Justice Department admitted its attorneys had improperly concealed evidence that could have helped his defense. A court-ordered investigation concluded in November that prosecutors had engaged in “significant, widespread, and at times intentional misconduct,” but that they should not face criminal contempt-of-court charges.

Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the department has paid about $1.6 million since 2009 to private lawyers representing the six prosecutors targeted by that court investigation. It also paid $208,000 to defend three prosecutors from a separate finding that they had committed civil contempt of court.

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Ex-Sen. Ted Stevens/campaign photo

WASHINGTON – The special prosecutor who investigated the botched case against late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is not recommending criminal charges against any of the Justice Department attorneys who tried him despite finding widespread misconduct beyond what has yet been publicly revealed.

The findings in a two-and-a-half-year investigation by Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III were revealed Monday in an order from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan. Sullivan wrote that the investigation found the Stevens prosecution was “permeated” by the prosecutors’ concealment of evidence they collected that could have helped the senator’s defense.

The full 500-page report remains under seal until the Justice Department has a chance to respond, but Sullivan says he will release it publicly.

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DETROIT — Nada Prouty, the former Taylor woman who was drummed out of the CIA, prosecuted and stripped of her U.S. citizenship in 2007 because of a fraudulent marriage, says in a new book that she was railroaded by overzealous prosecutors and FBI agents in Detroit.

“They had no interest in the truth,” Prouty, 41, says in “Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA” (Palgrave Macmillan, 282 pages, $26). She is launching a two-week nationwide tour today to promote the book.

“As a national security worker, I was an easy target,” Prouty said, adding that prosecutors coerced her into pleading guilty, partly by threatening to destroy her husband’s career at the State Department. She said she is a patriot who put her life on the line in the war on terror as an FBI agent and CIA officer.

Prouty pleaded guilty in 2007 to citizenship fraud and accessing an FBI computer without authorization to get information about a Detroit-based national security investigation involving Hizballah, which the U.S. designates as a Lebanese terrorist group.

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OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• U.S. Atty in Brookly Names New Criminal Chief (NY Times)
• U.S. Atty: Mailing Chicken Pocks Lollipops is Illegal, Reckless (TPM) 
• S.C. Fed Judge Sanctions Boxer Mayweather (AP)
• Businessman Says Former Partner Tried Settling Dispute by Hiring Hitman (Courthouse News Service) 
• Detective Accused of Sexual Assault (Courthouse News Service)
• Supreme Court Wrestles With Jerusalem Passport Case (Politico)
• Column: Letting Go of the Border Security Blanket (Security DeBrief)

Mohamed Mohamud

Despite all the advances, human error can still trump  modern technology.

The Portland Oregonian reports that the FBI’s efforts last July to record Mohamed Mohamud  first talking about taking part in a terrorist bombing plot in Portland failed because the tape recorder went dead.

“Put simply,” the government wrote in court paper filed Thursday, “it was human error: the device was accidentally turned on hours before the meeting time and therefore ran out of battery power as the meeting began.”

Mohamud’s lawyers have claimed their client was entrapped into participating in a plot to kill and maim thousands at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland on Nov. 26.

The paper reports that the first utterances in the case could be very significant.

The paper reported that legal scholars say “the FBI’s botched recording will make for interesting arguments in court because first utterances of criminal intentions are pivotal in entrapment cases.”

Barry Bonds/facebook

Home run slugger Barry Bonds just keeps knocking them out of the park in the legal arena.

On Friday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge’s ruling that bars three steroid tests from being introduced into his perjury case, a ruling that will weaken the federal government’s case, the San Franciso Chronicle reported. And it could potentially spell the end to the case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco.

Bonds, 45, had told a federal grand jury in 2003 he had never knowingly taken performance enhancing drugs. He was indicted in 2008 for perjury and obstruction of justice.

The court, in a 2-1 ruling,  barred the evidence because Bond’s trainer Greg Anderson, who had arranged the tests, refused to testify against Bonds, resulting in no valid evidence that Bond was the source of samples for the tests,  the San Francisco Chronicle wrote.

The prosecution had delayed the case pending the ruling on the evidence.

Dennis Riordan, a lawyer for Bonds, told the Chronicle that the delay in trial was a concession by the prosecution that it “could not proceed against Mr. Bonds in a jury trial without the evidence that’s now been excluded.”

“We hope that this puts the entire prosecution to rest,” Riordan said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office does have other evidence in the case, the Chronicle reported. It said the office declined comment on the ruling.

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Read Court Opinion

Maybe there’s more to this, but from outward appearances it seems rather bothersome that the Justice Department is scaling back in an area so important. We need to crack down more, not less on the violent Mexican cartels that have spread their tentacles in the U.S.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is eliminating 30 attorney positions from anti-drug trafficking task forces, scaling back a key program as the U.S. tries to combat Mexican cartels and stem the flow of weapons and illegal drugs across the border.

U.S. Attorneys’ offices will realize the loses through attrition, and all nine Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force regions will be affected, Justice officials said. The OCDETF cuts were announced in a memo sent to U.S. Attorneys offices last month.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the memo, citing personnel matters and the ongoing budget process.

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