Editor's note: I reported this story with Karen Gullo for Bloomberg News.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Pete Kott and Vic Kohring, former state lawmakers imprisoned for taking bribes from an oilman, can be freed and have their convictions reviewed.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department made the unusual request for Kott's and Kohring's release and reconsideration of their convictions because prosecutors withheld information from their lawyers. The request came two months after a judge threw out the conviction of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens stemming from the same probe.

The terms of their release will be up to U.S. District Judge John Sedwick in Anchorage, who presided over the men's trials, according to rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Sedwick will review the ramifications of the withheld evidence on their convictions.

"This case is all but over," John Henry Browne, Kohring's lawyer, said Wednesday.

Browne said he has received hundreds of pages of documents "that we should have gotten before Vic ever went on trial." Most of the documents include interviews with key witnesses, he said, declining to provide specifics.

"It was obviously intentional," Browne said. "Somebody went through and deliberately took out exculpatory material and withheld it from us."

Kott's lawyer, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, declined to comment on the material she's received from federal prosecutors.

Kott and Kohring, both Republicans, were convicted on bribery and corruption charges in 2007. They were accused of taking bribes from Bill Allen, the former owner of the defunct oil-contracting company Veco Corp., in exchange for agreeing to torpedo a controversial vote that would have raised state taxes on oil companies.

Kott was sentenced to six years in federal prison and Kohring got a 3 1/2-year sentence. Kott has been at a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, and Kohring at a federal prison in Taft, California. Both men appealed their convictions.

In court filings, federal prosecutors said material has been uncovered "that, at this stage, appears to be information that should have been, but was not, disclosed" before Kott's and Kohring's trials. Prosecutors didn't disclose what information should have been provided.

The Justice Department's admission of mistakes in the two Alaska cases came two months after a federal judge in Washington set aside the political corruption conviction of Stevens.

Stevens went on trial for allegedly failing to publicly disclose more than $250,000 in gifts from Allen and others. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan railed against federal prosecutors for their handling of evidence and a witness.

Stevens, a Republican, was convicted by a federal jury in Washington on Oct. 28 and lost his bid for re-election the following week by a few thousand votes. In April, the Justice Department admitted that prosecutors had made mistakes in the case and asked Sullivan to dismiss the conviction. Sullivan threw out the conviction on April 7.
In requesting that Steven's conviction be set aside, the Justice Department cited the prosecution's failure to turn over evidence that might have helped defense lawyers rebut the charges.

Four of the prosecutors involved in the Stevens case, Joseph Bottini, James Goeke, Nicholas Marsh and Edward Sullivan, were involved in the cases of Kott and Kohring.

Bottini and Goeke are assistant U.S. attorneys in Anchorage. Marsh and Sullivan are Washington-based prosecutors in the Justice Department's public integrity section.