You may recall that a few days ago, on March 11, 2012, to be exact, we had a post on misconduct of government counsel, that had been inspired by the ongoing controversy over some federal prosecutors who failed to make a required disclosure of exculpatoty evidence to the late Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, during his prosecution – click here.
By way of follow-up, we learn from today’s Los Angeles Times (Richard A. Serrano and Kim Murphy, Lawyers Faulted in Trial of Ted Stevens, L.A. Times, March 16, at p. AA1, quoting the special prosecutor handling this affair) that the misconduct was unintentional, but that the prosecutors in question purposefully violated criminal contempt statutes. We have problems understanding this evident doubletalk because our Webster’s New World Thesaurus, indicates that “purposeful” and “intentional” are synonymous. You can take it from there.