Charley Noble said, inter alia:

Judicial Bias, in that the judge was not a resident of Alaska!

Jurial Bias, in that none of the jurors had even traveled to Alaska, and some were not even aware that it was a state

Neither of those (even if the second of them should be true) would show bias.

To claim judicial bias, you'd have to show some evidence of actual biased thinking in some crucial rulings in the case. That the judge is not a resident of Alaska is merely an incident of the venue and particular judicial assignment, and there's no reason on the face of it why a non-Alaska judge could not be unbiased. And I seem to have read somewhere that Stevens actually had sought the eventual venue rather than Alaska. Even if he sought to be tried in Alaska and was overruled in the assignment of the venue he got, that MIGHT be a ground, but it wouldn't be on the basis of bias. The ruling that he be tried where he was, I'm sure, was by a different judge than the one who tried him.

Having spent almost all of my working life in a federal trial court, I know that the jury will have been very thoroughly instructed as to the essential elements that the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, including that Stevens was a United States Senator for Alaska, which I don't believe was ever denied by Stevens. A Senator is elected in and represents a State. Alaska's State status was not a fact in issue.

Dave Oesterreich