SusanHu writes on the disturbing display of Libby jurors calling for a pardon.
If you caught MSNBC’s Hardball today, you saw a kindly, bright Libby juror, Ann Redington, saying things like “I don’t want him to go to jail” … “Libby seemed to be ‘a really nice guy’” … “He seemed like a ton of fun” … “I didn’t want to see him and his wife and say he was guilty of a crime” … “I think he got caught in a difficult situation where he got caught in the initial lie, and it just snowballed.” Ann, and the other jurors, need a sit-down with Larry Johnson, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Robert Richer, Bob Baer, Tyler Drumhiller, and other intel experts who know what went down. An hour or so with that group, and Ann will understand that Scooter was no hapless nice guy trapped in a bad situation.
Only in America can you have a guy revealed as the prime mover in the needless slaughter of over a half a million innocent people and have the jurors say shit like this. Our sense of entitlement is staggering.
an interesting, long, read on what happened in the jury room at the Libby trial by the guy who made the statement…this brainiac is easy to id
from {Huffintonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/docs/libby/]
march on the pentagon: 3.17.07
Draft Al Gore: 2008
BooMan:
Brilliant.
I think it’s a great and striking leap of the imagination from the facts to the last sentence. I’d like to see the intermediate steps spelled out.
Maybe you can spell them out. I’m tired from the DFA Philly for Change meeting tonight.
Thanks for the response. Please note I’m praising a comment that struck me as brilliant.
I’m tired too, so I guess I’ll skip the exercise of trying to imagine the unconscious steps that took place in YOUR mind when you made that leap. Or maybe not.
hmmm…Juror identifies with Libby the fellow Washingtonian careerist. A family man. Identifies with him. Is oblivious to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians that was abetted by Libby’s crimes. BooMan leaps: this is because of the “American sense of entitlement.” hmmm. okay. Maybe I would have called it something like “the American imperial hubris.” The sense that non-American lives simply do not count. The sense that one dead white woman is worth a million dead Asians.
I guess I commented on this because I think of “entitlement” as referring to a sense of holding a claim of right to some U.S. government benefit over and against other fellow citizens. But it can be used in this broader sense as well.
As Tom Ashbrook on NPR’s “To the point” show would say, “I get it.”
I agree that this juror’s feelings on this crucial case are worth a lot of deconstruction.
“Nothing could be worse for America, and eventually the world,” he writes at the end of this unsparing volume, “than if American policy were universally viewed as arrogantly imperial in a postimperial age, mired in a colonial relapse in a postcolonial time, selfishly indifferent in the face of unprecedented global interdependence, and culturally self-righteous in a religiously diverse world. The crisis of American superpower would then become terminal.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski
This is from his new book “Second Chance” & to me, it shows how out of orbit the “pardoners” are.
Thanks for the learned comment. A main reason I spend so much time in Blogistan.
He’s pleasant and has a nice smile while he stabs you in the back. plus he has a family
What disturbs me is all the people asking jurors if they think Libby should be pardoned.
I wonder what kindly, bright Libby juror Ann Redington would say if she was the juror in a case with a young black man accused of armed robbery. Would it matter if he was a good father, or a loving son? Would she or any other jurors feel a guilt about sending him away for the best years of his life? Somehow, I think she and the other jurors wouldn’t give it a second thought.
In a similar vein, someone on Kos posted a sampling of Freeper reaction to the verdict. The same folks who cheer on the execution of mentally retarded people in Texas turn around and defend the actions of someone who is essentially a traitor.
I think it’d be a good idea if jurors were expressly forbidden to talk about cases they were a part of in the public space. In the end, you’d avoid shit like this.
It also further illuminates the weaknesses of using an antiquated jury system in most of our trials.
of our current crop of judges are being appointed by conservatives, I still like the idea of a jury as a buffer.
And this case shows that despite the flaws of the jury system, justice was done in this case. The one count they found Libby “not guilty” on was the one they had the most questions about — they may have figured that four out of five wasn’t so bad.
And I’ve been on juries where I’ve felt that I didn’t want the person to go to prison — but fortunately, that wasn’t my choice; I and my fellow jurors found the defendant guilty under law, which is just what the jurors did in this case.
But I too wonder if this juror would feel the same way if, say, he’d offered to do an errand for a friend, and that errand turned out to be delivering drugs and he happened to get caught? And instead of Scooter Libby, he was an African-American from the Washington ‘hoods? Would they be so quick to say, “Oh, I hope he’s pardoned”? I doubt it…
Psi, before I take you to task re: this:
perhaps you could indulge me with a more definitive exposition of what, exactly, you’re trying to convey with that statement.
if you are insinuating that being judged by a jury of your peers is an antiquated concept, what, would you propose, is more appropriate?
march on the pentagon: 3.17.07
Draft Al Gore: 2008
What I mean is that we’re really the last remaining industrialized nation using the jury system – just about everyone else has adopted bench trials exclusively. That’s why I say it’s antiquated – it’s from a bygone era.
Given that jurors come out of trials and make idiotic statements such as the one above that make no sense in the context of their decision, one really wonders if it wouldn’t be best to scrap the system and let the judge be the lone determinant in the outcome.
Well, with what we’ve seen recently with the politicization of the US attorneys (how many others were leaned on and complied?), I don’t think I’d want to put my fate in the hands of a single judge instead of a jury.
Would you?
Umm, you can’t be serious. Given the quality of judges that I appear before regularly, I’ll take the jury instead.
even military court martials have a 3 judge panel. my understanding, and IANAL, is that it’s possible to waive the right of a jury trial in certain cases/circumstances, should you ever have the misfortune of being in such a position, make your choice. I would prefer to have my fate resting in the hands of 12 persons, rather than those of 1 judge.
especially given, as CG and B2 have stated, the fact that there are an awful lot of people on the bench, and in the bar as well, of questionable competency.
there’s nothing to be done about jurors who seek to gain some notoriety by making idiotic statements, short of instigating a gag rule, much like that employed with Grand Juries.
if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
march on the pentagon: 3.17.07
Draft Al Gore: 2008
Let the jury have a few days to collect their thoughts. It is time for the Democratic representatives to get to work. The jury found the reasons that Libby lied. Will the Congress finally do something about it? Does absolute power corrupt? Why do thoughts of impeachment seem to be the only way to stop this treading on the Constitution?
I realize quite well that it is easy to rip anyone throwing even a drop of water on the Joy of the libby moment. However, how about this: All of our anger that is correctly focused on the pieces of shit running our country into oblivion couldn’t stop this individual from doing her duty. She was able to honestly state that even though she felt sorry for the libby family, she still found him guilty of four out of five counts!
That Mr Boo is a GIANT PLUS!
Half full vs half empty.
I agree with your “GIANT PLUS” verdict. I listened to the juror on Hardball, then read Denis Collins’ long piece at Huffington Post. It shows explicitly that the jurors deliberated by carefully evaluating the witnesses and the evidence presented. I don’t object to Ms Redington being able to voice her feelings and opinion; we learn from Mr Collins that her demeanor was to sound out the opinion of others during the discussions so that all opinions were voiced.
What I DO object to is Chris Matthew’s continually asking each night about the report that former Amb Wilson made, as if he never reads anyone’s book or magazine article, which is readily available. He also would do well to pursue the background story to how the forgeries came to exist.
going to find out firsthand the devastating effects of having the pandering MSM propaganda news services foist “opinions” upon the public. The retardation of “feel-good” stories aimed at a twelve year old audience while absolute criminals rape the country, steal the businesses and neglect our sick and hungry.
That type of thing just can’t go on for long periods of time before something crashes. It will, and it will soon.
BooMan writes:
KNUCKLEHEAD (Nice sig, Knucks) quotes Brzezinski:
“The crisis of American superpower would then become terminal.”
Yup.
“Our sense of entitlement is staggering.”
Yup squared.
Our “sense of entitlement” is not only staggering…it is on the brink of falling right on its face. Being literally PUSHED down by the angry mass of humanity that it has insulted and dominated for over 300 years.
(I know, Booman…that’s not the meaning of of the word “staggering” that you intended. But poetry is wherever you find it, isn’t it.)
Later…
AG
I wonder if the juror who said this “he got caught in a difficult situation where he got caught in the initial lie, and it just snowballed” and the others who want Libbey to get a break said the same thing about Martha Stewart.
Libbeys allies in the media mostly wanted President Clinton thrown out of office because they thought he lied about Lewinsky. It’s crystal clear that these people have one standard for Democrats and no standard for Republicans. Lying is only wrong if Democrats do it.