This from a Special Prosecutor who knew one week in that the crime he had been assigned to investigate never occurred. Now, we have a man convicted with conflicting counts (either he lied or he didn’t–the jury says he lied and he didn’t), and by a jury which, after nine days of deliberation, just three hours before its conflicting verdicts sent a question to the judge asking what it was that Libby was being accused of. They were even at that point apparently unsure and confused about what they had been deliberating on for nine days.
So, the defense, understandably, will be asking for a new trial based on those issues, which they probably will not get. They will then appeal, which is their best option and at which they can prevail.
The smart-guy lawyers at Powerline have commentary (and I’m sure will through the day) as does Hot Air. As this unfolds, there is also has a roundup of news and blog opinions at Pajamas Media.
UPDATE:
Talkative Libby Juror Denis Collins is apparently a journalist who has written for the Washington Post among other newspapers. There is also word which I’m still checking on that he plans to write a book. As you can imagine a book about a case like this is only relevant when there’s a guilty verdict. Another element the Libby defense team should consider is if a juror or jurors had a financial interest in the nature of the verdict, either through furthering their own profile, or the sale of a book about the matter.
They already have an excellent case for both a new trial and an appeal base on the fact that Collins also noted that a myriad of other considerations affected their deliberations, like Libby being the “fall guy” for Karl Rove. It seems they created an entire conspiratorial back story with other characters that had nothing to do with whether or not Libby, as an individual man, lied.
Juror Explains Libby Verdict: They Felt He Was ‘Fall Guy’
NEW YORK A spokesman for the jury that convicted “Scooter” Lewis of four counts today of perjury and obstruction of justice today in a federal courtroom told reporters immediately afterward that many felt sympathy for Libby and believed he was only the “fall guy.”
Denis Collins said, “We asked ourselves, what is HE doing here? Where is Rove and all these other guys….He was the fall guy.”
He said they believed that Vice President Cheney did “task him to talk to reporters.”
He said, “some jurors said at one point, ‘We wish we weren’t judging Libby…this sucks.”
Asked about Vice President Cheney not testifying, he said, “Having Cheney testifying would have been interesting.” And when the defense opened the trial by suggesting that Libby was scapegoated by the White House, “I thought we might get to see President Bush here.”…
Collins, a journalist who has written for The Washington Post and other newspapers, described the jury’s painstaking deliberations. He said there were several “managerial types” on the jury and they spent many days just assembling post-it notes in some kind or “buildings blocks” fashion. They did not take an immediately straw vote.
Yeah, no political pre-conceived notions there.
Stabbed in the back and thrown under the bus by the liberals in the White House!
There are many reasons why only liberal Republicans now think Bush is not a terrible President; this is one of them.
The White House hoped that by having an incompetent prosecutor they could get Scooter off with a hung jury; and then Bush would not look like the back stabber he is. But even a clown like Fitzgerald was able to get a conviction. Libby was guilty of the same crime Clinton was (and still is). Both were/are liars. Clinton has loyal friends. Libby has liberal Republicans! As the Danes found out 13 months ago; depending on liberal Republicans is like depending on the French – a bad idea.
The coward in the White House will not pardon him; at least not until 1/09.Libby is going to the grey bar hotel. Too bad. Once again Ann Coulter is right!
“This from a Special Prosecutor who knew one week in that the crime he had been assigned to investigate never occurred.” So why is he guilty?
As I’ve said before, the degeneration/disassembly of America continues. God help us…
Let’s see if we all understand the rules:
1. It’s OK to lie about sex.
2. It’s OK to lie about stealing classified documents from the national archives.
3. It’s OK to lie about getting drunk and driving off bridges and drowning campaign workers.
4. It’s OK to lie to help the environment.
5. It’s OK to lie about why you ordered federal agents to kill cult members in Texas.
6. It’s OK to lie about why you granted presidential pardons to tax-evading expatriates.
7. It’s OK to lie about the location of law firm billing records.
8. It’s OK to lie about why you are in possession of FBI files.
9. It’s OK to lie about why you fired employees of the White House travel office.
10. It is not OK to lie (or have an erroneous memory) when you are being asked about a crime that never happened.
I hope we can all keep these straight.
Paul from Hamburg, thanks for the great history lesson! Well chronicled and Amen. Will we ever wake up? Sad but true.
Scooter Libby has been convicted of the Martha Stewart crime. He said something to the police which later turned out not to be true. Making a false statement to the prosecution is now a crime, even if you’re not under oath at the time.
As I mention at my blog, it’s gotten to the point where the only response any law enforcement official should ever get from anyone is “On the advice of counsel, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.”
When they get tired of getting that response from everyone and his dog, maybe they’ll change the law so that people who make honest mistakes don’t wind up on trial trying to prove to a jury what they were thinking five years before.
The few radio soundbites I heard from one juror suggest at least a few of his fellow jurors were suffering from BDS, but that’s nothing new from inside the Beltway.
This reminds me of the Simpson jury in reverse. In the Simpson case, white liberal politics set a guilty man free. In the Libby case, an innocent man is made the scapegoat for anti-Bush bigots. Our jury system did not need the mess the Libby jurors delivered today.
This business about Denis Collins is truly frightening if it turns out true. How did he slip past the $800/hr lawyers who were supposed to be serving their client?
It remains a travesty that Libby was ever prosecuted to begin with.
This was a political show trial, and partisans of Joe Wilson will use the guilty verdict to declare vindication. But along the way we learned that virtually all the claims Wilson and his supporters made were false:
* On his trip to Niger, Wilson found no evidence that contradicted the famous “16 words” in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, contrary to his New York Times op-ed claim.
* Plame, his wife, who worked for the CIA, did recommend him for the Niger junket, contrary to Wilson’s denials.
* Plame was not a covert agent under the definition of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, contrary to Wilson’s insinuations, which many of his backers, including in the press, presented as fact.
* No one from the White House “leaked” Plame’s identity as a CIA functionary to Robert Novak, who received the information from Richard Armitage at the State Department.
Libby stands convicted of lying in the course of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle–but that investigation was undertaken on the basis of a tissue of lies. When Fitzgerald began the case, in 2003, no one had committed any crime in connection with the kerfuffle, and that was fairly easy to ascertain, given that Plame was not a covert agent and Armitage had already owned up to the so-called leak. Fitzgerald looks like an overzealous prosecutor, one who was more interested in getting a scalp than in getting to the truth of the matter.
Of course, Libby could have avoided indictment and conviction if he had simply said “I don’t remember” a lot more during the course of the investigation. Therein lies a lesson for witnesses in future such investigations–which may make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs when pursuing actual crimes.
From: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009752
This is the limit. This tears it as far as I’m concerned. I no longer have any confidence in or respect for the system of justice in the U. S. After O. J. I committed myself to giving it just one last chance. Libby was it. No more. As of today I’ve resigned to live my life in such a manner as to completely preclude the possibility of ever resorting to the courts for any type of judicial relief.
The only – ONLY – positive effect this verdict might have is to serve as a giant wake-up call to Republicans who have been far too amenable in letting whackjob Democrats determine this country’s destiny. State Republican central committees immediately need to start nurturing future candidates who can sound off like they’ve got a pair. But does the will to do this exist? Don’t ask me.
A Zen Koan: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
An American Koan: If a fall guy’s in a courtroom and no crime is anywhere near it, does it make any sense?
Kung Fu, Patrick Fitzgerald.
[LOL!–ed.]
Two points:
(1) William “Refrigerator” Jefferson, despite the convictions of two people who admitted bribing him has neither been tossed out of Congress nor indicted.
(2) There are two classes exempt from the federal law making lying to federal officials a crime: (a) lawyers acting like lawyers; and (b) Congresscritters acting like Congresscritters.
Is there a connection between these two points?
All these quotes suggest MASSIVE jury misconduct, as well as a level of incomptence in jury selection that I would expect better of MYSELF as someone who’s only been a prosecutor for just under a year.