U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia said that attorney Kevin Driscoll shouldn't have been among the prosecutors he cited Friday for contempt for failing to turn over documents to Stevens' legal team.
Sullivan, who oversaw Stevens' trial last fall, issued the unusual Saturday order, saying Driscoll was new on the case and handling just one post-trial issue. Sullivan said Driscoll wasn't responsible for not following his earlier order to hand over the material involving an FBI whistle-blower's complaint to Stevens' team.
Sullivan said his order still stands against William Welch, the head of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section; Brenda Morris, his chief assistant and the lead trial attorney in Stevens case; and the chief of the Justice Department's criminal appeals section, Patty Merkamp Stemler.
Stevens, convicted in October of seven counts of failure to disclose gifts and services, is seeking a new trial, saying that government misconduct denied him a fair trial. The whistle-blower complaint, by an agent who worked on the Stevens investigation, surfaced in December and contains allegations that prosecutors acted improperly during the trial.
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