CNN/AP: More questions from jury, no verdict in Libby trial

[DeepModem Mom]

More questions, no verdict in Libby trial
March 5, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Jurors completed their ninth day of deliberations Monday without a verdict in the perjury trial of ex-White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, but before finishing they asked three more questions about one charge.

The seven women and four men were told they would get answers when they resume work Tuesday.

The note with the jury's latest questions was not made public.

But a brief courtroom debate between U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, prosecutors and defense lawyers -- with the jury out of the room -- indicated the questions related to a charge that Libby lied to the FBI about a telephone conversation he had with Time magazine's Matt Cooper in 2003 concerning CIA operative Valerie Plame....

***

Walton and the lawyers decided to finish answers to the new questions Tuesday. But their debate revealed that jurors had asked whether they could use Libby's grand jury testimony, which was played in court, as evidence that Libby lied during an earlier FBI interview.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said the answer should be "yes" in the sense that all the evidence in the case helped establish Libby's state of mind. Libby's lawyers said the grand jury testimony could not be proof of the earlier statement. Walton agreed with both arguments, but said an instruction encompassing both would have to be crafted carefully....

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/05/cia.leak.ap/index.html

[bleever]

1. What's Scooter thinking?

My guess is: "Why me? This has become a serious drag. I've been a dedicated player, why should I take the blame for the whole team? I've got kids to think about."

[Patsy Stone]

2. "I keep telling them:

Don't photograph me next to this guy -- he's too tall! But they never listen."

[bleever]

3. "And Ted:

I look smaller when you put your hand on my shoulder."

Seriously, this picture is worth however much a thousand words is in today's verbal currency.

They're both acutely aware that they're being photographed on the national stage, mindful of the future implications of these images on managing perceptions with regards to eventual pardons, etc., etc., and:

this was the best they could come up with.

Makes me VERY glad that I didn't participate at a high level in a putsch to co-opt American democracy for a junta of treasure-hungry warlords.


:thumbsup: for me and my monkey.