A federal judge ruled late Wednesday that former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott received a fair trial in 2007 on corruption charges and that the "court has not found a sufficient basis" to order a new trial or dismiss the case.

Kott is trying to get his conviction thrown out on the grounds that prosecutors failed to turn over critical information to the defense before the trial -- the same basis upon which another federal judge threw out the case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.

A federal jury found Kott guilty of conspiracy, extortion and bribery in a trial that relied heavily on secretly recorded conversations. He was sentenced to six years in federal prison and had served about a year and half of that when he was freed while questions over whether he received a fair trial are sorted out.

Until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considers the matter, Kott will continue to remain out of prison, under Wednesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge John Sedwick.

Sedwick agreed with the defense that prosecutors did in fact wrongly withhold evidence that Kott should have received. But, he said in the 20-page order, the mistakes likely would not have changed the trial's outcome in light of what he at one point called "very damning evidence from the audio/video recordings." Sedwick presided over Kott's trial.

The order still is a setback to Kott's effort to throw out the corruption case -- a case that grew out of maneuvering around oil tax legislation in 2006. Unlike in the Stevens case, prosecutors have argued that Kott's conviction should stand.

The key prosecution witness against Kott was former Veco Corp. chief executive Bill Allen, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to bribery, conspiracy and tax charges. Allen, who reported to a federal prison in California on Tuesday, was also the chief witness in the trials of former state Rep. Vic Kohring and Stevens.

Kott contends prosecutors failed to provide him with discrediting information they knew about Allen and other witnesses, including former Veco vice president Rick Smith, who was suicidal as Kott's trial date approached and later admitted to memory problems.

"That is what we have been saying all along -- that the government knew about information favorable to Pete, and suppressed it," Kott's lawyer, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, said in an e-mail Wednesday night.

"I am glad that the judge recognized that the government attorneys who prosecuted Pete violated the constitution and suppressed evidence that was favorable to him," McCloud wrote. "I am disappointed -- and, following the questions at oral argument, surprised -- that the judge did not follow that finding through to its logical conclusion. The logical conclusion would have been to throw the guilty verdict out because it's not trustworthy."

In his order, Sedwick wrote that Allen's testimony played an important role in the prosecution. Many of the withheld materials related to an Anchorage police investigation into allegations that Allen was sexually exploiting minors, the judge wrote. Kott contends he should have had access to that information, which he could have used to discredit Allen's testimony.

Sedwick said that even though Kott's trial team knew that Allen made a deal with prosecutors in the corruption case, the defense didn't know that Allen might also have been cooperating because of the sex crimes investigation.

"While there is no direct evidence that Allen's cooperation with the government in the corruption trials was motivated by his desire to avoid charges for his alleged sexual crimes, Kott was deprived of knowledge of the potential additional benefit Allen may have hoped to receive in exchange for his cooperation," the judge said in his order.

But even with that, Sedwick wrote that he would have not allowed jurors to hear about such "sordid and reprehensible acts" because such evidence "creates a serious danger of confusing the issues which the jury actually needs to decide -- whether Kott is guilty of the crimes charged, not whether Allen is guilty of sex crimes."

Kott didn't need that evidence, Sedwick wrote, because the defense showed "Allen's bias based on the substantial value of Allen's co-operation concerning punishment for the public corruption crimes to which he had pled guilty."

As to Kohring, he also was convicted at a 2007 trial and imprisoned. He was released from last year along with Kott.

Kohring also is trying to get his case thrown out because of prosecutorial missteps but he sued his trial lawyer over a car crash. His new lawyer hasn't yet filed a request for a new trial or dismissal of the charges. Kohring has until late March to do so.