These aren't the only US Attys in trouble with a Federal Judge. In a case I doubt many have heard about, Federal Judge Gold issued a expensive smackdown costing the US more than $600,000 and maybe the US Atty's lic's.

MIAMI (AP) -- A federal judge reprimanded prosecutors and ordered the U.S. government Thursday to pay a defendant more than $600,000, saying members of the man's defense team had been secretly recorded in a questionable witness-tampering investigation.

In a strongly worded, 50-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold said three prosecutors and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent acted "vexatiously and in bad faith" in the case of Dr. Ali Shaygan, who was acquitted in March of 141 counts of illegally prescribing painkillers.

Gold also faulted prosecutors for failing to obtain permission from supervisors in the U.S. attorney's office before authorizing two witnesses to record conversations with Shaygan attorney David O. Markus and his investigator. None of the information was turned over to the defense, Gold noted, including the fact that the two witnesses were cooperating with the government.

This makes me curious:

"Morris' assignment as lead prosecutor on the case -- just days before Stevens was indicted -- reportedly rankled some of the Alaska-based prosecutors who had built the case, as well as Welch himself. But the objections were dismissed by Matthew Friedrich, then the head of the department's criminal division, and his deputy, Rita Galvin. Critics of the move say valuable time was wasted bringing Morris up to speed on the details of the case."

Why was she assigned?
Did she lobby for the post or was she ordered there?
Did Matthew Friedrich and Rita Galvin do the appointing?
Was it their idea or did it come from above? Mukasey?
Was this a covert attempt to impede or disrupt the investigation? or was Morris considered such a star that a delay was acceptable?

Given past politicization of the justice department and the final outcome of this case, an attempt to delay the outcome until after the election (which Stevens would probably have won) would not be surprising.

Are the prosecutorial misconduct charges related to an attempt to bring charges before the election and prevent another of Bush's politicizing of justice?

As I have mentioned before, I work for the Department, though I have never worked on this case.

This irks me:

These were serious missteps by veterans who should have known better -- and an independent prosecutor will determine whether they were deliberate enough to qualify as contempt.

I don't know if I go with the "veterans" line, particularly when it comes to Marsh and Sullivan, both of whom came from different sections (not litigating public integrity cases, which are complex and difficult and unlike commercial litigation, which they were undoubtedly used to). I suspect they did the core grunt work of document production and review, issuing subpoenas, taking some depositions, etc., but I would be hesitant to smear these men with the sweeping generalization that they were "veterans" and should have known better. I am hesitant to rush to judgment.

Although that statement made me irked, this one flat out pisses me off:

Perhaps the case is a good reminder, then, that for Attorney General Eric Holder, fixing that politicization won't in itself fix all the problems of the Bush Justice Department.

At the risk of being impolite, fuck you, Roth.

I think your last line paints the Department as incompetent or worse because there are a handful of attorneys who botched a case. a high-profile case with some apparent political (I mean bureaucracy political, not political political) elements at play, perhaps with Marsh.

And suddenly the entire Department is a bunch of Bush-appointed idiots, or perhaps, impliedly so ("fixing the politicization won't fix all the problems" implies "the problems" of weeding out these [Bush] idiots!).

Well most of us were not appointed by Bush. We are civil servants who came not at the time of the politicization of the DOJ, and I would venture that is a hell of a lot of us. No civil servant is a Bush appointee. So to suggest that the DOJ is plagued by incompetence, as your last paragraph surely does, is a cheap shot opinion unrelated to journalism.

I would like you--nay, I dare you to respond, Roth--by telling me the last time the DOJ botched the prosecution of a major case. I'm talking when the litigation was led by main Justice, not a USAO, which acts independently. Or, hell, even then.

We are the largest law firm in the world, my friend. And just because a handful may have egregiously dropped the ball, does not make us all tyrants and villains or drooling idiots. I doubt you'd want to be painted as just another Judy Miller. Pay the same respect before you editorialize through idiocy.

Just as a hypothesis, the information here suggests to me that the Public Integrity Unit and perhaps the entire DoJ have a real problem with their culture.

It seems to have become a culture in which the goal in every case is to "win" rather than to do justice. That could be because it is a lot easier to measure an individual's "wins" rather than whether that individual made sure that justice was applied and that the standards of integrity normally taught by the legal profession were followed.

I wouldn't have any doubt that the DoJ was headed that direction anyway, but that when the Bush administration took over, they appointed top managers who have the "win at any cost" attitude so well-known in conservatives. The additional idea held by conservatives that every decision a person makes is entirely his own responsibility as an individual and that there is no such thing as a group would also have to be considered. Under such a philosophy, group culture is ignored because it is assumed not to exist.

Add to those factors the additional related conservative idea that the leader is personally responsible for the outcomes or the organization, and it seems likely to me that the real problem is that the DoJ already had a culture going in the direction of eliminating or being blind to ethical considerations was a major contributing factor.

But this is, of course, very vague. Group phenomenon are a lot like power (which is one element of it.)Where you can measure accounting data at the transaction level and aggregate it to the level of economics. In the meantime, an awful lot of the economy is based on social and personal power, which is easily recognizable but impossible to measure reliably, consistently and objectively.

That's why I think that such difficult to perceive and impossible to measure phenomenon as group culture have been very important. Of course, the existing leadership and its power is also very important and can sway the group culture one direction or another. Leader attitudes at lower levels change with new top leaders, but there is an inevitable lag while the old culture begins to change with changed attitudes and employee turnover.

Organizations are not monolithic. Even small ones. I worked as an attorney for an agency I thought I knew like the back of my hand and that had always given me the freedom to make decisions that were in the interest of justice and not just "winning." Then, I got a new supervisor. And I discovered that the whole agency was neither as uniform nor as supportive as I had once thought.

As an attorney you have to be willing to do what is right even when your supervisor is telling you not to. Don't hesitate to call your state bar and talk with the ethics counsel there to get a neutral perspective. If the government wants to fire you for doing the right thing, let them.

I hope that if sanctions are doled out, the most serious ones go to managers who overrode recommendations that information be disclosed.

[[Rather, it seems the mistteps were the product of the gung-ho culture of federal prosecutors in general, which prizes victory over complete fairness and harsh sentences over equity.]]

It ain't just federal prosecutors. It's some of the state/local guys, too. And unlike Stevens, most of those defendants can't afford attorneys with the ability and connections to get such cases tossed even when they richly deserve tossing.