Back in 1986, Sessions was a U.S. Attorney who’d been nominated to be a federal judge by President Ronald Reagan. He was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee — the second time that had happened in half a century — after witnesses reported hearing him make comments such as referring to the NAACP as “un-American” and to a white lawyer working on a civil rights case in Alabama as “a disgrace to his race.”

NPR’s Michel Martin yesterday asked Hebert how that should affect how we view his criticisms of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor now:

MARTIN: Is there something in [Sessions’] record at the time that causes you to believe that he did cross that line from being merely conservative in his approach to social issues to being racially hostile or insensitive was the word that was commonly used?

HEBERT: Oh, definitely back in 1986, I had no doubt about that and testified to that effect, I believe, that it wasn’t a question of, you know, he was joking about these things or saying them in a joking manner. He was someone who was a product of the Deep South, and his racial attitudes reflected at that time a continued hostility towards equal-opportunity efforts by African- Americans, particularly in Alabama.And that was true back then, and obviously he now represents many of those same people as a U.S. senator.

He will ask questions that he thinks he’s entitled to ask, and he’ll ask them in a very professional and what I would believe would be a very polite way. At the same time, ultimately, many of us feel that no matter what the answers are, he’ll still ultimately vote no.

Although it’s been 20 years since Hebert’s testimony, he said yesterday:

“I would still have concerns, frankly, today, just knowing the public persona of Jeff Sessions that I’ve seen over the years.”

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But campaign finance watchdogs, while praising the attorney general’s acknowledgment of prosecutors’ wrongdoing, want more information about why Holder said he’s not going to re-try Stevens on the charges of failing to disclose gifts worth about $250,000 from an Alaska energy firm.

“The motion filed by the Government in the case today and other allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the case are gravely serious and must be fully addressed,” said J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center, in a statement released today. “But the outright dismissal of an indictment rather than agreeing to a new trial is such an extreme measure that it warrants additional explanation. What is it about the information that now justifies outright dismissal of the indictment with prejudice?”

To be sure, the government’s motion filed with the District Court gives no clue. It says only that the interview notes of a key witness were not provided to Stevens or his lawyer when they should have been. “The Government believes that granting a new trial is in the interest of justice. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(a).”

But the Government goes on to say that it’s “further determined that, based on the totality of circumstances and in the interest of justice, it will not seek a new trial.”

Why not? As Hebert notes, “a prior inconsistent statement, even of a key witness, is likely not the only reason that our nation’s chief law enforcement officer would authorize prosecutors to seek a dismissal of an indictment after conviction, especially in a high profile case like this.”

Sure, Stevens is 85 years old, and some, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), have said that he just didn’t understand today’s rules, and putting him in prison won’t do any good. But as Hebert points out, “he was prepared (if he won re-election) to serve another 6-year term,” despite strong evidence that he lied and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in valuable gifts that he never reported.

The attorney general ought to provide more information, then, about why he’s dropping the case, said Hebert, who also wants “assurances that the public integrity section of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division is now being supervised to a degree that pending investigations (e.g., arising out of the Abramoff scandal, Rep. Jefferson, Rep. Doolittle, etc.) are not at risk of being thrown out for similar prosecutorial misconduct.”

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