"And if they'd turned over the evidence to the defense, there's not much chance he ever would have been convicted in the first place. All they managed to do was to get Begich elected to the Senate."

Whoa, Nelly! Not so fast, Rig. That statement is not even close to being true.

Snippets, from HERE:

"But the dismissal will not declare Stevens innocent. Nor will it rewrite the facts of a case in which Stevens took thousands of dollars in favors and freebies from wealthy friends."

"Michael Sklaire, a former corruption prosecutor, said the decision to dismiss the case was more about punishing the prosecutors for withholding evidence than about exonerating Stevens. When the case against a drug dealer falls apart, Sklaire said, the charges disappear but the defendant can't really say he's innocent because he still got arrested with drugs."

"Those that came to mind, she (juror) said, were the $2,700 massage chair, a custom stained-glass window worth $3,200, and a $29,000 fish sculpture. None of those had anything to do with the home renovations or the disputed testimony."

"At trial, he (Stevens) said he didn't disclose the items he received because they were not gifts. The massage chair, for instance, remained in his house for seven years but Stevens said it was a loan. He said he assumed the stained-glass window was paid for, since his wife takes care of such things. The fish statue was a donation to his foundation, he said, and only remained on his front porch because that's where the donors shipped it."


One of the most disturbing, if not damning, facets to this case is the question: What was a Senator doing in bed with a bigtime oil man/lobbyist in the first place?