One of the federal prosecutors who was involved with the prosecution of the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens — which the Justice Department dismissed due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct — has taken his own life.
News of Nicholas Marsh’s death, first reported by NPR on Monday, came ahead of a forthcoming report by a special prosecutor appointed by a judge that looks into those misconduct allegations.
Marsh was one of the so-called Stevens Six and had been separately under investigation for alleged misconduct in convictions of two other Alaska politicians.
Stevens, who died last month in a Alaska plane crash, is set to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday.
In dismissing charges that Stevens lied on Senate financial forms about gifts he received from wealthy friends, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said last spring: “In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”
Marsh was also involved in the 2006 indictment of the Mylo Enterprises, which was hired as part New Hampshire phone jamming scheme. Last year he was transferred to DOJ’s Office of International Affairs, where he worked on the Roman Polanski case.
“Our deepest sympathies go out to Nick’s family and friends on this sad day,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division said in a statement to NPR. “The Department of Justice is a community, and today our community is mourning the loss of this dedicated young attorney.”
Robert Luskin, the lawyer who Marsh hired to represent him last spring, called his death a tragedy.
“It’s particularly sad because I am sure that, at the end of the day, he would have been completely exonerated,” Luskin told Main Justice on Monday.
Contempt proceedings had implicated former Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch II, former section supervisor Brenda Morris, assistant U.S. attorneys James Goecke and Joseph Bottini and Edward Sullivan, a former Public Integrity trial attorney according to the National Law Journal.
USA Today reported last week that their investigation found that federal prosecutors had violated laws or ethics rules in 201 cases since 1997.
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