In Stevens Case, Justice Was Served After All

Ted Stevens and his lawyers were awfully indignant yesterday for a crew that had just won. “You’d think there would be jubilation,” said Stevens’ attorney. Instead, “it was revulsion, revulsion turned to anger,” Brendan Sullivan raged. Stevens himself lamented that “consequences…can never be reversed.” In other words, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, justice was done.

"Dismissing the case because prosecutors were bad is not the same thing as saying Stevens is good,” Milbank argues. Many of the more damning accusations were unrelated to the prosecution’s misconduct, something the public probably won’t forget. Stevens was only charged with “penny-ante corruption” anyway, so it's appropriate that his punishment is political: “In the end, a form of rough justice triumphed.” (More Ted Stevens stories.)