I want to make comment about the Lewis 'Scooter' Libby trial. This will have nothing to do with the verdict.
I wasn't there. I don't have all the facts. The trial was incredibly politicized, These are all things I've worked to keep out of my blog.
There was, however, one part of the procedure which struck me when I read an article in Editor and Publisher.
If I ever go to court, that's what I want to hear - the jury was involved and thorough. It's something I think we often feel isn't there.
A few years ago, while tuning past C-Span on a boring Sunday night I had audio tapes of Supreme Court proceedings. It was a similar feeling.
I had no idea what the particulars of the case were, but I heard intelligent men and women pondering the facts with well thought questions and comments.
Cousin Michael, who reads the blog and who clerked in the US Circuit Court might write otherwise, but these comments from the Libby trial and my 'eavesdropping' on the Supremes, gives me optimism our republic is built on a solid foundation.
Or maybe I'm just naive. I hope not.
Quoting an observation I read elsewhere earlier today: just how did a Washington Post journalist and author of a book on spying (i.e. what Valerie Plame used to do for a living) make it through voir dire?!? I find that almost as mind-boggling as the fact that the jury actually was deliberate in its deliberations.
Since you mentioned me, I feel I ought to respond. I’ve never sat on a jury, so I can’t give an opinion about how they usually operate. I have, however, argued cases before federal judges and clerked for a federal judge, and my experience is that they take their jobs very seriously and are men and women with intelligence and integrity. While there is certainly prejudice and even irrationality at times, on the whole the legal system comes to conclusions that make sense. But my experience is primarily with federal courts (where judges are confirmed by the Senate in lifetime appointments) and not the state courts (where judges usually run for office and are tied to the local political machine), and I suspect that makes an enormous difference. There are no federal judges like that buffoon in Florida who cried at the Anna Nicole Smith hearing, and rarely are federal judges as incompetent and witless as Ito was in the OJ case. If Libby had been tried in a state court, the lawyers might still be yelling at each other as the judge cries and television cameras roll.