The Post examines DOJ’s Public Integrity section and its handling of the case against Sen. Ted Stevens.  The analysis seems to fault lack of preparation time, inexperience, and thin staffing for the problems in the Stevens case prosecution, citing “more than a dozen lawyers who followed the case.”   One lawyer quoted on this aspect of the case is Bill Reid. 

[The Stevens case] was to be the most high-profile prosecution of [DOJ Prosecutor Brenda] Morris’s career.

Four years earlier, Morris had run into trouble in a case she handled when a federal jury in Texas acquitted San Antonio criminal defense lawyer Alan Brown, who had been charged with tax offenses. In a subsequent civil suit filed by Brown, who alleged that FBI agents had wrongfully pursued him based on a sketchy account from his disgruntled secretary, the government ultimately paid Brown $1.34 million to settle the claim.

Brown and his lawyers say that Morris ignored warnings from local federal prosecutors who cast doubt on the credibility of a critical witness, an office assistant who peddled questionable information about Brown in a bid to win a reduction in the prison sentence of her boyfriend. A judge in San Antonio had thrown out the case before it went to trial, but an appeals court revived the prosecution, which Morris led.

“She is the race car driver who blew past the red flag,” said Bill Reid, a lawyer for Brown in the civil wrongful prosecution case.