Anchorage Daily News

An attorney defending U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens against federal charges argued Tuesday that the government's failure to provide an advance look at evidence risks jeopardizing the fast-approaching trial.

In a motion to compel the government to turn over the material, Robert Cary accused prosecutors of "dilatory tactics" that could jeopardize Stevens' right to a fair trial.

But the government, which is prosecuting Stevens in Washington, D.C., on seven counts of filing false annual financial disclosures, dismissed the defense claims as being "without merit."

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has scheduled a hearing today on at least a half-dozen significant issues that have arisen over the last month, including the motion filed Tuesday. Stevens' trial is set to start with jury selection on Sept. 22 and is expected to last about a month.

Under that schedule, the trial would end just a week or so before election day, Nov. 4, when Stevens, the Senate's longest serving Republican, is standing for his seventh full term against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat.

Stevens is accused of intentionally failing to disclose gifts and benefits worth more than $250,000 from friends and favor-seekers, chief among them Bill Allen, the former chairman of the oil-field services company Veco Corp. Allen has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska legislators and will be one of the government's chief witnesses against Stevens.

ALLEN INVESTIGATION

In his filing, Cary argued that the government's obligation to turn over evidence that would be favorable to Stevens -- or damaging to the witnesses against him -- should include information about an Anchorage investigation of Allen for sexual abuse of a minor.

The Daily News reported in February that in 2004, Anchorage police investigated whether Allen had sex in the 1990s with a girl who was under 16. The case was closed at the request of federal prosecutors, when the girl, by then an adult, had become the chief witness in a federal case involving a sex-and-cocaine ring. One of the federal prosecutors told the Daily News last year that he had feared the police working on the federal investigation would become distracted by pursuing Allen, jeopardizing the drug and sex case already at hand.

Anchorage police reopened their investigation in December, then suspended it when witnesses couldn't be located.

Cary demanded the government provide details about "the pendency of any investigation (into sexual abuse by Allen), whether it was quashed, why it was quashed, and when it was quashed," because all that is relevant to Allen's credibility.

"His cooperation with the government, and the nature of his testimony, may well be driven by a belief, whether justified or not, that his assistance to the government would guarantee him immunity or leniency in the state investigation," Cary wrote.

But in its reply to Cary, filed shortly after 6:30 p.m. in Washington by Brenda Morris, principal deputy chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, the government argued that the sexual abuse case shouldn't be used to impeach Allen at the trial.

"As the Court knows, the government has sought to limit cross-examination of Bill Allen concerning matters that are highly inflammatory and prejudicial to the government," she said. Nevertheless, the government has already provided some limited information about Allen to the defense, and the defense could have read about the matter in the newspaper, Morris said.

'FALSE AFFIDAVIT'

Cary also alleged the government knows about a "purportedly false affidavit" signed by David Anderson, Bill Allen's nephew and an expected witness against Stevens. The affidavit, submitted in an unrelated case, contains a claim by Anderson that "the government has provided him and his friends and family with a broad grant of immunity in exchange for his testimony in this case."

Anderson has told reporters that he was one of the key workers sent by Allen to renovate and furnish Stevens' home in Girdwood starting in 2000. Anderson later had a major falling-out with Allen over a girlfriend and other issues, and Allen was questioned during a trial last year whether he wanted to kill Anderson. Allen denied it.

Cary also demanded any plea agreements the government may have entered into with Anderson and another Veco worker on the Stevens home project, Rocky Williams. In an earlier filing, the Stevens defense team acknowledged being told by the government there were no such deals. But the defense questioned whether there were informal understandings.

Morris said there were none, and the defense knew it.

"Defendant's decision to petition the Court to compel production of nonexistent materials is an abuse of process and should be denied," she wrote.

Cary also challenged audio tapes made of intercepted phone calls of Stevens. He said that if Stevens wasn't the designated target in wiretap authorizations signed by a judge, the evidence contained in them should be suppressed. But the government has so far failed to provide the necessary information about the recorded conversations to make that determination, he said.

Morris said the government provided everything that was required by law. And she ridiculed a demand by the defense that the government turn over data that would identify each photograph taken in Stevens' house during a government raid last summer.

"In support of this argument, defendant appears to claim that he can only understand, and thus make use of, these photographs if he has a log identifying what those photographs are," she wrote. "But these photographs are not murky, covert snapshots of an unknown crime scene; rather, they are photographs of the defendant's house. Again, defendant is clutching at straws."

With its 22-page response, the government also filed 68 pages of letters and e-mails between prosecutors and defense attorneys concerning the exchange of evidence. In one, there's a reference to videos taken from cameras hidden in a kitchen and a living room, though there was no explanation.

That reference appeared to indicate the existence of previously undisclosed FBI surveillance cameras. Video from inside Veco's suite at the Baranof hotel in Juneau played a significant role in convicting two state legislators last year of taking bribes from Allen.

Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.

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