Poor Irving "Scooter" Libby. There will come a day when Libby trial will be held up as one of those prosecutorial misapplications of justice.
According to firedoglake, Libby's defense team is having a hard time finding impartial jurors for his trial. In a city that routinely votes for Democrats regardless of their criminality or corruption, it will, indeed, be an uphill climb for Libby to find impartial jurors.
"I am completely without objectivity. There is nothing you can say that would make me feel positively about President Bush."*
Thus spake the eighth of nine prospective jurors reviewed by Judge Reggie Walton, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and defense attorneys Ted Wells and William Jeffress today. She had indicated on her juror form she had some strong opinions about the Bush administration, and, queried in her turn by Judge Walton, she cast her eye over all assembled in the courtroom and declared herself.
"So, you are saying you do not believe you could render a fair and impartial verdict in this case, based on the evidence and according to my instructions to the jury prior to deliberations?," Judge Walton followed.
"That's right," she responded, whereupon she was immediately excused from jury duty.
I can't understand why the case couldn't be moved elsewhere. Actually, I don't understand why the case is being brought at all, except that Patrick Fitzgerald has to find someone to prosecute and he isn't about to go after Richard Armitage, the guy who actually leaked Valerie Plame's name (well, aside from her husband lyin' Joe Wilson).
Libby's defense team is obviously going for a hung jury, knowing that in an overwhelmingly Democrat town, he has about as much of a chance of acquittal as O.J. Simpson had if he'd actually been tried in Brentwood.
Libby could be convicted, not because of his own malfeasance, but because of public sentiment against the Bush administration in general and Vice President Cheney in particular. Back to the firedoglake article:
In the end, there will be a jury empaneled, and though the pace of juror review slogged along slowly today, the people at the courthouse seem to think we'll be done by Thursday. If today is any indication, the best Team Libby can hope for would be jurors who can give them a fair shake, enough of whom may have enough trust and faith in the president and the vice president to trust that their ex-employee, Irving "Scooter" Libby, is telling the truth. Today's jurors don't seem to show signs of being among those true believers in the administration's aggressive war policies, but then again, you never know with a jury, and people can and do surprise you.
The writer, of course, doesn't point out that the case shouldn't be about the war in Iraq or presidential policies but whether Libby lied under oath. I'm waiting for Dems to explain that it was an "irrelevant question," as they have about Bill Clinton's perjury.
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