Anchorage Daily News

WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors on Monday drew ire from the federal judge hearing the corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens for sending home to Alaska a potential witness who has figured prominently in other people's testimony but so far has not testified himself.

Stevens' lawyers asked for a mistrial and accused prosecutors of failing to tell them everything they knew about Robert "Rocky" Williams, once an employee of former Veco chief executive Bill Allen and the man who oversaw renovations to Stevens' Girdwood home in 2000.

Scolding prosecutors from his bench, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said there was no basis for a mistrial, but he said he was "flabbergasted" that they had sent Williams home without alerting him or defense attorneys that Williams was no longer scheduled to testify.

The contentious issue weaved through Stevens' trial all day, boiling up at every recess just before the jury entered the courtroom or just after it left. By the end of the day it was unclear how serious the row would be to the outcome of the case.

Stevens, 84, faces seven felony counts of failing to report on his U.S. Senate disclosure forms more than $250,000 worth of gifts and home renovations, chiefly from Veco and Allen. The Alaska Republican, who is up for re-election Nov. 4, asked for a speedy trial so he'd have the opportunity to clear his name before then.

Prosecutors explained sending Williams home to the judge and the defense in hushed tones in a morning conference at the bench. No information was made public aside from a reference in the defense motion that Williams suffered from a serious cough and had health issues.

Whatever it was, the judge was openly skeptical, suggesting the government might have decided that Williams, who has been voluntarily cooperating with the FBI for more than a year, might not help its case.

"I find it very, very disturbing that this has happened, and concerned about the appearance of propriety, or impropriety," Sullivan said. He stopped short of accusing prosecutors of misconduct or a lapse in ethics, but threatened sanctions.

"After all, this is the search for the truth and people ought not to forget about that," said Sullivan, who asked lawyers to give him a sworn declaration of what had happened under penalty of perjury. "This is a serious one; we're all officers of the court."

WILLIAMS' WORK

Despite all the talk and court filings, Williams appeared to be able to contradict only one piece of evidence presented so far.

On Friday, Veco accounts manager Cheryl Boomershine submitted a report that the 2000-2001 renovations amounted to a $188,929 gift by Veco to Stevens. Among her backup documents submitted for jury consideration were timecards from Williams showing he worked as much as 60 or 70 hours a week. She applied all those hours when calculating Veco's cost on the house.

When the government sent Williams home, they told him to call the defense after he arrived. He did just that on Friday, lawyers for both sides told the judge. The call led to his first interview by the defense; he had turned them down earlier. Williams told them he never worked even a full week at the Stevens house, let alone overtime, but split his time on other tasks.

That's nothing new. Williams has said the same thing in newspaper interviews. He said as much to a federal grand jury, according to excepts of his testimony submitted by the defense.

Called back to the stand Monday, Boomershine testified she never received a breakdown for Williams' hours and applied all his time to the house project.

The defense argued that her entire report is suspect. "This new information gravely undercuts the government's case," it said in its demand for a retrial or dismissal of the charges.

But the main prosecutor, Brenda Morris of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, pointed out that in her opening statement Thursday she never said the government would be able to precisely measure the value of the alleged gifts, only that they would prove to be substantial.

Prosecutors said they didn't intend to give the impression they were hiding information and apologized, but they were caught off balance by the judge's ire. At one point, the chief of Public Integrity, William Welch, sat with spectators in the courtroom to listen to his staff get berated.

"We're distressed that we're being accused of this," said the prosecutor who bore the brunt of the judge's scolding, Nicholas Marsh.

No one answered the door or the phone at Williams' trailer Monday morning in South Anchorage. A pair of pickup trucks sat parked in the driveway, and what sounded like a television played inside.

MORE TESTIMONY

Prosecutors continued to build their case by bringing to the stand a series of tradesmen who worked on Stevens' home.

A carpenter who was paid by Veco testified he was told to be quiet about the project when Allen hired him in 2002.

"He said a certain amount of discretion would need to be used because it was the senator's house," and the company was actually an oil services firm, not a general contractor, testified Brian Byrne, who oversaw construction of the first-floor deck.

Prosecutor Joe Bottini asked Byrne why he thought Allen would have said that.

"I'm not really sure, other than the appearance of impropriety, I believe, is what he was concerned about," Byrne said.

Virtually every workman has been asked by either the prosecution or defense if they encountered Stevens or his wife, Catherine, at the house. Not everyone has. In asking those questions, the government is trying to show that Stevens knew full well Veco was working there, while the defense hopes to suggest he didn't.

Cecil Dale III, a former Veco electrician who now lives in Raton, N.M., testified about installing thousands of dollars in heat tape and new circuits on Stevens' roof to prevent ice dams. He then explained to a puzzled jury what heat tape and ice dams are.

Did he meet Stevens? asked Beth Stewart, one of Stevens' attorneys.

Yes, he had, he said. He had forgotten about the meeting and didn't mention it in his grand jury testimony, he said. Then, when he was subpoenaed for the trial, his wife asked if he still had the cigar. That's when he remembered meeting Stevens in the house.

"He had given me a cigar and shook my hand and said good job, with (Veco supervisor) Dave Anderson standing there," Dale said. Stevens knew they were from Veco, he said.

"How was the cigar?" Stewart asked.

"I never smoked it," Dale said.

That brought a smile from Stevens at the defense table.

BEN STEVENS

A short time later, Stevens looked visibly angry during the last bit of housekeeping for the day. With the jury gone, prosecutors announced that Allen would probably begin testifying this afternoon.

The government appeared to be winning one key battle involving Allen's testimony: whether he could be questioned by the defense about an unresolved Anchorage police investigation that he had sex with underaged girls. The defense hoped to discredit Allen's testimony with the allegations, but Judge Sullivan said the issue was too prejudicial. While he didn't make a final ruling, he said he was leaning toward allowing the defense to inquire only about an investigation into an uncharged felony without saying it involved sexual abuse a minor.

What brought the flash of anger to Stevens was when the prosecution said it planned to ask Allen to name the Alaska state legislators he bribed. One would be former Senate President Ben Stevens, Ted Stevens' son.

Stevens jabbed a finger at the prosecution table as he said something to his attorneys. Stewart put her hand on his arm to calm him.

Another defense attorney, Robert Cary, told Judge Sullivan that naming Ben Stevens would be prejudicial to Ted Stevens. He suggested the prosecutors use the language of Allen's charging documents -- which only spoke of Ben Stevens as "State Senator B."

But Bottini, of the U.S. Attorney's office in Anchorage, said Allen named Stevens specifically in testimony in the trials last year of two Alaska legislators.

Judge Sullivan said that since the names of Stevens and other legislators came out in testimony in open court in Anchorage, he'd be inclined to let the Washington jury hear them too.

Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News contributed to this report.