AP
We've reached Day Four of jury deliberations in the trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and verdict-ready reporters are anxiously awaiting an outcome. Media insiders (as well as the parties) were treated to a false alarm yesterday morning when both sides were summoned to the courtroom - as it turned out, instead of announcing a decision, the court revealed that a juror had been dismissed for "media exposure" over the weekend (we'll admit to being curious at what s/he was able to dig up in the midst of the Oscar-Obama/Hillary/Geffen-Britney-Anna Nicole bonanza). Here's a wrap up of last week's final stages:
After a turbulent month of testimony (minus two key witnesses) and persistent excecution of textbook strategies by the defense (hammer home the government's obligation to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Libby deliberately lied), the show culminated last Wednesday with defense attorney Ted Wells' tearful summation. The white collar miracle worker pleaded with jurors not to "sacrifice" his client for "how you may feel about the war in Iraq or how you may feel about the Bush administration," and asked that the panel of eight women and four men give the former Cheney chief of staff "a fair shake" (without failing to mention that he has a wife and two children).
Presiding Judge Reggie Walton then presented jurors with a whopping fifty pages (give or take a few) of instructions to guide their deliberations. Among the directions were requests that jurors consider their "life experiences" and "the capacity of human beings to remember things they said and were told" in determining whether Libby lied about revealing the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. The jurors then retired to deliberations on Wednesday evening, and have since made contact (with the exception of yesterday's evicted member) only to issue written requests for a flip chart, masking tape, Post-it notes and a document containing pictures of the witnesses.
Meanwhile, the media has been happy to discuss whether the Vice President's former national security adviser took a bullet for his ex-boss by refusing to testify in his own defense. Regardless of his motives, the cost of Libby's silence could be substantial - if convicted on all five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to the FBI and a grand jury, he faces up to thirty years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. It's enough to make the rest of the intelligence community nervous, particularly given the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal noted, the case has "added fuel to calls for a broader examination of how intelligence was used in political arguments in the past six years," and provided "insight to congressional intelligence officials about how the governments statements may differ from actual intelligence reports."
Adding to the drama are the high stakes for prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, whose credibility may rest on obtaining a guilty verdict. The Washington Post opined last week that a prosecutorial loss will only "intensify the debate over whether [Fitzgerald] should have brought the case in the first place," and potentially place him in the basket of prosecutors who "set[] off and think[] they can't come back unless they have a prosecution, no matter how trivial." With reputations and careers on the line and growing calls for more scrutiny on use of government intel (as well as use of unnamed sources and other journalism practices), there's plenty left to question besides the actual trial outcome. Though one thing we can count on is that the party attracting the most unanswered questions is the one person who won't be talking.
