Scooter
I posted this yesterday at Just One Minute:
Damn.
The appeal will be interesting legally but a nullity politically.
Unfortunately, getting a jury - any jury - to understand the burden on the prosecution in a criminal matter is very difficult. It appears, as one commentor notes above, that this particular jury, faced with a rather unconvincing prosecution, rolled up its collective sleeves and got to work doing the prosecution’s job for it.
It is also unhelpful to have a judge intent on preventing a full defense and declining, time after time, to grant the defense the customary latitude to bring in evidence going to context. Some of those rulings likely contain errors of law; but the overall effect of Judge Walton’s cheese paring was to deny Libby the right to present critical facts to the jury. Ms. Mitchell being one of them, Ms. Plame’s still murky status being another. By denying Libby the opportunity to bring in such evidence Walton ignored the spirit of the law which entitles an accused to mount a full defense.
I’m not terrifically impressed with Well’s decision to go for simple and streamlined because nothing about this case was simple. Pushing the judge a lot harder and calling more witnesses who would speak to the sheer incompetence of the overall investigation would have made sense. So would calling the multiple other sources of the Plame pushback within the administration. This might not have done the administration much good but Wells was acting for Libby not George Bush.
Finally, for our Fitzmas friends: when you were expecting a bike under the tree and you get socks you still have to smile. Because that’s all you’re getting
.
Written by jay on March 7th, 2007 with
1 comment.
Read more articles on US Politics.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article
#1. March 7th, 2007, at 11:01 PM.
Finally, for our Fitzmas friends: when you were expecting a bike under the tree and you get socks you still have to smile. Because that’s all you’re getting.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Jay. Some Republicans are beginning to talk about impeachment.
“The president says, ‘I don’t care.’ He’s not accountable anymore,” Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. “He’s not accountable anymore, which isn’t totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends how this goes.”