Deborah Gilg (Gilg, Kruger & Troia)

As four new Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys took their oaths of office this week, their predecessors resigned. They are:

• Hawaii: Edward H. Kubo Jr. resigned yesterday. He had been the Hawaii’s U.S. Attorney since 2001. Kubo recently was one of six people who was nominated to fill a vacancy on the state First Circuit Court.  Florence Nakakuni was sworn in yesterday. She was confirmed Sept. 29.

• Nebraska: Joe W. Stecher resigned this morning. He has been the district’s U.S. Attorney since 2007. Stecher said, “I have a few options” both in the private and public sectors. Deborah Gilg was sworn in today. She was confirmed Sept. 29.

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  Daniel Bogden (Getty Images)

  Nevada: Gregory A. Brower resigned this morning. He had been the district’s U.S. Attorney since 2007. Brower has not announced official plans but has been mentioned as a possible Republican opponent for Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2010 or as a Nevada attorney general candidate. Daniel Bogden was sworn in 10 a.m. Pacific Time. He was confirmed Sept. 15.  Bogden was fired in 2006 as part of the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorney purge. Reid recommended him to President Obama for his old job.

• Western District of Washington: Jeffrey C. Sullivan resigned today. He had been the district’s interim U.S. Attorney since John McKay was forced out during the U.S. Attorney firings in 2006. Sullivan will remain in the office, working as a prosecutor in the criminal division. Jenny Durkan was sworn in this morning. She was confirmed Sept. 29.

Andrew Ramonas contributed to this report.

Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a sharply worded opinion that rebuked the Hawaii U.S. Attorney’s Office for its conduct in a 2007 criminal case, The Honolulu Advertiser reported today.

Kozinski wrote that Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Gabriel Colwell inappropriately questioned defendant Rex Harrison during cross examination, according to the newspaper. Colwell was detailed to the office from the military as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney to the Hawaii office, the paper reported.

Harrison, a civilian contractor who installed secure computer networks on military bases, was convicted on two counts of assaulting military officers and sentenced to two years in prison. The judge overturned one of the counts, vacated Harrison’s prison sentence and sent the case back to the U.S. district court, according to The Advertiser.

“It’s black letter law that a prosecutor may not ask a defendant to comment on the truthfulness of another witness … but the prosecutors here did just that,” Kozinski wrote, adding that the questions were not “isolated incidents.”

Ninth U.S. Circuit Court Judge Jay Bybee was even more critical. In a dissenting opinion, the former Bush Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel chief — who’s been under his own ethics cloud for his role in authorizing brutal interrogation techniques — wrote that the entire case should be overturned.

The “outrageous behavior of the lead prosecutor” in the case was “so extensive that summarizing it all is no easy task,” Bybee wrote, the Advertiser reported.

“We do not permit attorneys to support or undermine witnesses by either vouching for their veracity (“Brutus is an honorable man”) or branding them unreliable (“All Cretans are liars”),” Bybee’s opinion said.

The office of U.S. Attorney Edward Kubo “conceded the impropriety” of the prosecutor’s questions in the appeal, Kozinski wrote but noted that Colwell and his co-prosecutor were on loan from the military, the opinion said.

“That’s no excuse at all,” Kozinski wrote. “When the United States Attorney endows lawyers with the powers of federal prosecutors, he has a responsibility to properly train and supervise them so as to avoid trampling defendants’ rights.”

Two names for U.S. Attorney in Hawaii have been sent to the White House for consideration, Hawaii ABC affiliate KITV reports. They are Assistant U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni, a federal prosecutor in Honolulu for more than 20 years; and Democratic former state legislator Tommy Waters, a former deputy public defender now in private practice.