Story highlights Jeff Sessions was attorney general of Alabama in the mid-1990s, when the office was accused of prosecutorial misconduct

Trump has nominated Sessions for US attorney general

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(CNN) As Sen. Jeff Sessions awaits a confirmation hearing in hopes of becoming the next US attorney general, a blistering legal opinion on a case he oversaw as Alabama's top prosecutor two decades ago could emerge as an issue for the nominee.

The 1997 "order and opinion" by an Alabama judge accused the state attorney general's office, which had been headed by Sessions, of the worst prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen.

"The court finds that even having been given every benefit of the doubt, the misconduct of the Attorney General in this case far surpasses in both extensiveness and measure the totality of any prosecutorial misconduct ever previously presented to or witnessed by this court," wrote James S. Garrett, a Jefferson County Circuit Court judge.

The misconduct was "so pronounced and persistent," Garrett wrote, that "it permeates the entire atmosphere of this prosecution."

As a result, Garrett dismissed the case, which, according to the judge's order, had earlier been heralded by Sessions' office as being "of the greatest magnitude" it had undertaken in the past 25 years.

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