When a federal judge last week released a summary report on the botched trial of Alaska’s late Sen. Ted Stevens, he said it detailed “the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence” and "widespread and at times intentional misconduct” by federal prosecutors.

Stevens could afford a high-powered lawyer to defend him. Imagine what would happen to you if prosecutors decided to cut corners.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan says he eventually hopes to release most of the 500-page investigative report looking at misconduct by Justice Department lawyers during the prosecution of Stevens. But already a picture is emerging of abuse within the system that is supposed to protect individual freedom.

At issue is the legal process called “discovery.” Defendants have the right to see evidence held by prosecutors that could help their defense, including deals cut with government witnesses or information that would allow their lawyers to question the credibility of such witnesses.

In Alaska’s and many other state courts, it’s a fairly straightforward process governed by fairly straightforward rules. After you’re indicted, your lawyer is supposed to get from prosecutors any evidence that’s going to be used against you. The discovery rules don’t completely protect defendants from prosecutorial misconduct in state courts. Defense lawyers will tell you they often get discovery material in the middle of a trial.

Recently, a state judge in Kenai ordered a new murder trial on a cold case because the state prosecutor -- Pat Gullufsen, who has since retired -- knowingly hid DNA evidence that would have helped the defense. He even lied to the judge about it, all of which the judge found “troubling" and "disturbing."

Still, at least in state court the discovery rules are unambiguous. In federal court, the rules are much vaguer. It’s the prosecutors who decide what constitutes exculpatory evidence and what the defense can and can’t see. Because prosecutors want to win, that’s where abuses sometimes happen.

As Judge Sullivan pushes for the 500-page report detailing federal prosecutors’ mishandling of Stevens’ case to be released, a separate internal report from the Justice Department is pending. For the past two years, well-placed leaks to the media have suggested the problems with the case were perpetrated by two Alaska-based federal prosecutors at the time of the trial, Joe Bottini and Jim Goeke, as well as FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner, who works out of Anchorage.

But this doesn’t jive with what former state lawmaker Pete Kott’s lawyer found.

Kott was charged with taking bribes from Bill Allen, the prominent oilman who also was friends with Stevens and remodeled the Republican senator’s home in Girdwood. Allen cooperated with the feds in exchange for a reduced prison sentence and perhaps other things. Later, after the prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens’ case was brought to light, his lawyer, Seattle-based Sheryl McCloud, became privy to documents held by prosecutors that could have helped Kott question Allen’s motives and honesty as a government witness.

“The written documents I’ve seen show that it was the Department of Justice lawyers (in Washington, D.C.) who were making many of the calls on this case and were hiding exculpatory evidence,” McCloud said, adding she was “shocked” with how high up the chain the misconduct went.

U. S. Attorney for Alaska Karen Loeffler, who didn't return phone calls for this story, seems to be in defense mode. At a recent press conference, Loeffler would only go as far as to say that if mistakes were made by federal prosecutors in the Alaska corruption probe, they would learn from them.

Even among her peers, Loeffler seems unwilling to concede that sometimes prosecutors cut corners. At a recent meeting with lawyers across the state to discuss rules of evidence, she said that in her 23 years as a federal prosecutor, she was “not aware of situations where anyone thought, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got evidence they’re innocent and we wouldn’t turn it over.’”

But based on the summary report released last week, it is clear an investigator believes prosecutors in Alaska and Washington, D.C. knowingly did exactly that when it came to Ted Stevens.

What will happen to the prosecutors involved in the misconduct? And will the system ever be reformed?