April 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, days after dropping a political corruption case that helped drive Alaska Senator Ted Stevens from office, said he expects prosecutors to put fairness ahead of winning and hinted at a further Justice Department shake-up.

“Their job is not to win cases. Their job, ultimately, is to do justice,” Holder told reporters after speaking to department employees in Washington. He delivered the same message yesterday to a group of new assistant U.S. attorneys who were sworn in at the federal courthouse five blocks from the Justice Department.

On April 7 in that courthouse, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered an investigation by an outside lawyer of whether prosecutors in Stevens’s case committed criminal wrongdoing by suppressing evidence helpful to the defense. Sullivan set aside a jury verdict that Stevens, 85, failed to report $250,000 worth of gifts on his financial disclosure forms.

The Republican lawmaker, who served 40 years in the Senate, narrowly lost his re-election bid days after the verdict.

Holder, 58, has taken charge of an agency wracked by allegations that political considerations drove law enforcement decisions. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned in 2007 amid a congressional investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

Holder yesterday replaced the head of the Justice Department’s professional ethics unit, which investigates political corruption and complaints of misconduct against government lawyers. Sullivan, in naming an outside lawyer to investigate the Stevens prosecutors, had said the unit was too slow in reviewing misconduct allegations.

More Changes

Holder served notice that more changes are afoot.

“There are things that we have to take into account given what has happened recently, with regard to training, with regard to resources,” he said. Holder said there will be more announcements soon.

He delivered the same message to department lawyers during a tour of the agency’s criminal division and several satellite offices in downtown Washington.

He told reporters he will take a “hard look” at Sullivan’s suggestion that all federal prosecutors should be trained on their obligations to disclose evidence favorable to defendants.

“We must never forget the Supreme Court’s direction that a criminal trial is a search for the truth,” Sullivan said at the April 7 proceedings in his court. Sullivan said that, while the misconduct in the Stevens case is the worst he has seen in 25 years a judge, it is part of a larger problem in criminal cases.

Under Investigation

Six prosecutors are under investigation in the Stevens case, including the chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity section and its No. 2 official, the lead prosecutor of Stevens. Holder began his legal career as a prosecutor in that section.

The Stevens case unraveled after a new team of prosecutors replaced the original six. The first group had presented workers’ time sheets suggesting that renovations of Stevens’s house in Alaska performed by an oil-services company cost $188,000.

The new team found prosecutors’ notes of an April 15, 2008, interview with the government’s chief witness that hadn’t been turned over to Stevens’s lawyers.

The notes showed that the witness, Bill Allen, president of the oil-services company, had told prosecutors he estimated the renovation was worth only $80,000. Sullivan said the failure to give the information to the defense is the “most shocking and serious” violation of the disclosure rules in any case he has overseen.

“There is no question that these are challenging times for our department,” Holder told department employees today. “The only way” to “restore faith in the department is the work you all do.”

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 9, 2009 16:09 EDT