Defense closes with Stevens' testimony

WASHINGTON — In its four-year probe into corruption in Alaska politics, the Justice Department has secured five guilty pleas and won three convictions of lobbyists, business leaders and state lawmakers.

Now, it's up to prosecutors to persuade jurors to convict the most prominent figure of all in the federal investigation: Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate.

Tuesday will be devoted to closing arguments in the four-week-old corruption trial. Stevens' lawyers rested their defense Monday, after the 84-year-old senator took the stand in his own defense.

Stevens is facing seven felony counts charging that he deliberately concealed on Senate ethics forms some $250,000 in goods and services he received, largely from a friend, Bill Allen, and Allen's company, VECO, to remodel his home in Girdwood, Alaska.

Stevens had sought an early trial date hoping he could face voters riding a not-guilty verdict. But with 15 days of testimony and additional time spent on legal wrangling, the case will get to the jury just two weeks before the election.

For the jurors in Washington, it will come down to who was most believable: a parade of prosecution witnesses who detailed work they did on Stevens' home that was paid for by others, or Stevens and his wife.

Stevens and his wife, Catherine, have testified that they paid $160,000 to contractors other than VECO for the renovation and thought that covered the entire cost.

Prosecutors had apparently decided not to play a tape of a telephone conversation recorded by the FBI in which Stevens tells Allen that all the money Allen put into the house could land them in legal trouble.

Stevens maintained throughout his own testimony that he didn't want the things he was given — a grill, a fish sculpture, a generator, furniture, a high-tech massage chair, free labor — and that he never received bills for some of the work done on his home, even though he asked for invoices.

He also continued to place much of the blame on his wife, saying repeatedly that she was responsible for overseeing the renovations that led, in part, to his federal indictment. He simply was unaware of all renovation-related expenses, Stevens testified.

"Catherine paid for the work that was done at our house, she paid the bills and that's all there is to it," Stevens said, in what ended up being the final words in his trial.