Word: verdicts
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...September 2007, the jury voted in favor of the officers and awarded them $6.5 million. Though he vowed to appeal the verdict, Kilpatrick eventually brokered a secret deal that awarded the officers $8.4 million in public money in exchange for their silence about the extramarital affair. Four months later, local media outlets used Michigan's Freedom of Information Act to obtain all relevant trial documents and, in January, the Detroit Free Press published excerpts from the more than 14,000 intimate text messages sent between Beatty and Kilpatrick via city-issued pagers. In March, the local county prosecutor charged Kilpatrick...
...request (featuring an ill-advised appearance on the witness stand by an impatient Stevens), the trial threatened to get bogged down in jury deliberations, particularly when a juror left for personal reasons. But a replacement juror arrived, and in less than a day there was a unanimous guilty verdict, which could - but likely won't - result in up to five years in prison for each count...
...this was a crippling blow to his legacy, Stevens didn't let on. The Senator, who is currently up for re-election, treated the verdict like it was just another attack ad in a political season, issuing a statement that hit right back at "prosecutorial misconduct." He promised, as he has in the past, to fight for his election to the finish, and to "fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have." Said Stevens: "I am innocent." He will head to Alaska later this week, presumably to take part in a debate with his opponent on Thursday...
...Democratic supermajority of 60 seats in the Senate. But Stevens' chances are better than you might think. The latest polls, from earlier this month, show him in a nearly dead heat with his Democratic challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich. The numbers will change in the wake of the verdict, but it's worth noting that those polls had actually been moving Stevens' way, slightly, since he was indicted in July. It's possible that in Alaska, even a sullied Ted Stevens brand could be enough to win him election. After all, with oil prices tanking, voters could well buy Stevens...
...need more proof of Stevens' power, just look at Sarah Palin's mild response to the verdict. She hasn't been shy in the past about calling on tainted politicians to step down; she won the governor's race by running loudly against the corrupt old-boys' network. With Stevens, she was more circumspect. It was a "sad day for Alaska," she said in a statement, adding that the verdict was a reflection of "the culture of corruption I was elected to fight." She cryptically ended with the hope that Stevens "will do what is right for the people...