Test for Stevens: Make the Hulk a likable guy

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens face several challenges as they prepare to present evidence at his corruption trial. Among them: Making jurors like a man who has described himself as a "mean, miserable S.O.B."

The Senate's longest-serving Republican is expected to begin his defense Thursday against charges of lying on Senate ethics forms to conceal more than $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts from oil pipeline contractor VECO Corp.

On Capitol Hill, Stevens is the self-styled "Incredible Hulk" who unleashes his temper on lawmakers who don't go his way. But in the courtroom, with his future on the line, Stevens, 84, needs jurors to see him a likable, honest man who believed he was paying every bill for the renovations.

"As a general rule, likability, like credibility, matters when the case is close," said Saul Kassin, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of books on courtroom psychology.

It's unclear whether Stevens himself will testify.

Taking the stand would give him the chance to tell his side of the story: that he asked VECO founder Bill Allen, a friend, to supervise his home renovation and he believed Allen was giving him all the bills. If Allen, who has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaskan politicians, tacked on freebies, Stevens could say, he didn't know about them.

Testifying would let Stevens show jurors the kind, quirky and even affectionate side of his personality that his aides and friends say he displays privately. In one e-mail read to the court Wednesday, Stevens talks about how much he misses his wife when he's in Alaska and she's not.

"I'll be glad to have Catherine back here," he said in a September 2000 e-mail. "The cat is starting to talk back to me."

The downside of testifying would subject him to risky cross-examination by prosecutors who could try to unleash the inner "Hulk" of a man who has been heard on secretly recorded tapes to be sometimes profane and always defiant when he thinks he's right.

The senator has maintained a calm, if not dour, demeanor during his time in the courtroom. His expression didn't change even when listening to Allen, once a close drinking and fishing buddy, on the witness stand as the government's chief witness.

If Stevens doesn't testify, his wife could act as his surrogate on the stand. A former prosecutor now working as a lobbyist, she could tell jurors that she handled the bills for the project and that her husband was out of the loop.

Defense attorneys say they also plan to call several of Stevens' more prominent colleagues in federal government -- former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, are first on the witness list -- to testify about his character.

While they would provide star power, Shari Diamond, a Northwestern University law professor and psychologist, said that could backfire on Stevens unless his witnesses can connect with jurors.

The jury hearing Stevens' case is made up mostly of working-class residents of Washington, a group that seemed to like most of the prosecution witnesses -- VECO laborers who showed up in jeans and described the hours they spent working on the senator's house.

Jurors smiled at their stories and laughed at their jokes, like the electrician who told of driving out to the house to troubleshoot a problem the senator was having with an appliance. To make it work, the electrician said, he had to simply plug it in. Asked what he did next, the electrician smiled sheepishly and said, "I went home."

Stevens' case got a boost Wednesday when the judge threw out two parts of the government's evidence against him.

Prosecutors had introduced accounting records showing that a VECO worker logged hundreds of hours on the cabin project. But according to his own grand jury testimony, he was in Oregon much of that time -- something the defense only learned about this week, much to the judge's chagrin.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan also will instruct the jury on Thursday to ignore evidence and Allen's testimony about what prosecutors called a sweetheart car swap: a 1964 Ford Mustang and $5,000 from Stevens for a new $44,000 Land Rover purchased by Allen.

Defense attorneys had sought to show on cross-examination of Allen that the Land Rover was worth far less, only to have prosecutors surprise them by producing a check the witness used to pay for the vehicle. The judge found the check should have been shared earlier.

If convicted, Stevens faces up to five years in prison on each of seven charges, though under federal sentencing guidelines, he probably would receive much less prison time, if any. He is hoping jurors will acquit him in time to return to Alaska and defend his seat in an aggressive race against Democratic Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)