Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 2:45:42 PM
The Scooter Libby trial is over and he was found guilty of not remembering what he said to whom. He was not charged with not remembering a crime, he was charged with not remembering what he said to whom in an investigation of a non-crime. To have actually charged him was the height of arrogance for the prosecutor. For the jury to have found him guilty was a travesty of justice of the first order.
There has to be a way to stop prosecutors from overstepping their legal authority. Once the prosecutor found that there was no crime, he should have stopped all the investigations and closed the office. He felt he had to charge someone with something, so he continued.
The jury as late as three hours before the verdict sent a note to the judge asking for a clarification on what the actual charge was. That speaks of confusion in the jury room. It also speaks of the real possibility that the jury was going to find Scooter Libby not guilty. You don't ask for a clarification of the charge 10 days into a jury deliberation unless there is some confusion in the jury room.
The conviction will undoubtedly be appealed to a higher court. The judge made several glaring errors that I as a non-attorney can identify. The most glaring is that the defense was not able to point out to the jury that there was no crime committed in the entire affair. That would most likely have influenced the jury to vote for a not guilty verdict. That is why the judge and the prosecutor did not want the information to be placed in front of the jury. That would be suppression of evidence.
The judge made other rulings that handcuffed the defense and made it almost impossible for them to conduct an adequate defense. It looked to me, an almost disinterested observer, that the judge and prosecutor were in cahoots. The prosecutor got everything he wanted. The defense got almost nothing that it wanted. It just sounded kind of fishy with the sketchy information that I was able to glean from my sources.
What does this mean? The dinosaur media gets to crow how they defeated one of the most powerful people in the Bush administration. They have their victory and will crow about it for a couple of weeks. After the appeals are over, the case will be forgotten. I believe that Scooter Libby will be found not guilty on appeal. He was found guilty of a non-crime. That should not give him any problems what so ever. We shall see what shall happen.