Alaska Senator Is Convicted of Ethics Breach in Gift Scheme
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was found guilty on Monday of violating ethics laws for failing to report gifts and services that he was given by friends.
A federal jury of eight women and four men from the District of Columbia found that the 84-year-old Republican, who has represented Alaska in the Senate for more than 40 years, knowingly failed to list on Senate disclosure forms the receipt of several gifts and tens of thousands of dollars worth of remodeling work on his home in Girdwood, Alaska.The verdict came after more than three weeks of testimony, the highlight of which was Mr. Stevens making the calculated risk of taking the witness stand in his own defense.
Mr. Stevens has long been tied to the rough-and-tumble history of his home state and wields outsized influence over federal spending. Government prosecutors used evidence and testimony to paint a picture in which several of Mr. Stevens’s wealthy Alaskan friends, keenly aware of his status as the dominant political figure in the state, were eager to shower him with gifts. The indictment charged that he received some $250,000 worth from a longtime friend, Bill Allen, the owner of a huge oil-services construction company, as well as a sled dog, an expensive massage chair and other items from other friends.
Mr. Stevens’s defense was largely built on the notion that many of the goods and services he received were unasked for, and were things for which he had no use. In the case of the massage chair, he testified that it was not a gift from Bob Persons, a friend and restaurant owner, but rather a loan — even though the chair has remained in his Washington home for more than seven years and has been used by the senator.
Moreover, he asserted that his wife of 28 years, Catherine, and not he, oversaw the remaking of the Alaska home from a simple A-frame cabin into a grander two-story residence fitted with two decks, a new garage and amenities like a whirlpool, steam room and expensive gas grill.
Besides the federal jurors, Mr. Stevens is also facing a jury of Alaska’s voters, who will decide on Nov. 4 whether to return him to the Senate. Political analysts had said that a conviction would make it highly unlikely he could win re-election, but that an acquittal would provide a major boost to his effort.
Mr. Stevens is certain to appeal the conviction, and his supporters are also likely to explore the possibility of obtaining a pardon from a fellow Republican, President George W. Bush, before Mr. Bush leaves office in January.
The maximum sentence on each of the felony charges is five years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines could call for much less than that. Mr. Stevens will turn 85 on Nov. 18.
A senator can be expelled only by a two-thirds vote of the entire Senate, so a conviction does not automatically cost a lawmaker his seat. Since 1789, only 15 senators have been expelled, mostly for supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War, according to the Senate Web site.
In 1982, the Senate Ethics Committee recommended that Senator Harrison J. Williams, Democrat of New Jersey, be expelled because of his conviction on bribery, conspiracy and conflict of interest charges in the Abscam scandal, and in 1995 the committee recommended the expulsion of Senator Robert W. Packwood, Republican of Oregon, for sexual misconduct. Both men resigned before the full Senate could vote. Mr. Williams was convicted of bribery and conspiracy and served 21 months in federal prison
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