Judge To Address Jury At 4:30pm + Update

*BREAKING* There is a note from the jury the content of which we don't know yet. We also heard that the judge is going to address the jury at 4:30 pm today in the courtroom, and it is assumed he will dismiss them for the day. We don't know whether the two things are related or not, but Marcy will be liveblogging it as it happens. — JH

Link added: http://www.firedoglake.com/

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Wonder how this settles with Scooter?

Short version - a pasted-on broad smile in public at all times, but a glimpse of a stressed look at one point in the courtroom.

FDL's servers must have gotten slammed about 4:20 or so - I gave up trying to read more comments.

I want that Guilty so fast. Sadly tomorrow will be all Anna again.

hit a pathetic low earlier today .... of course, I am guessing, because I do not watch it for more than :30 seconds .... but one MSNBC person asked Rita Cosby about the hurried efforts to arrange the funeral, and Rita said, "It's a giant undertaking..."

No doubt the Anna funeral will outdo Gerald Ford.:puke:

Rita is seriously ill as in mad.

Add.

At the end of that segment the reporter who was reporting about the court happenings about the funeral ended her segment by saying, with a big, welcoming smile to boot, "We still have parentage, custody, and money to look forward to." I took that as a signal that they were NEVER going to let this story go. Reminded me of the Baby M story so many years ago too.

Imus suggested the "journalists" covering the ANS story be put to sleep. I can't force myself to watch the reporting on the case.

but I have to agree with him on this point.

"David Shuster of MSNBC is reporting:

We have been advised, and I have just confirmed, that the courthouse cafeteria is now flooded. And I can report that some type of liquid has created large puddles on the cafeteria floor, in the area where food is served. More significantly, the bathrooms next to the cafeteria have signs on the doors that say "closed." In other words, it is not a "cafeteria flood" as we had been led to believe, but rather a "bathroom flood" affecting the cafeteria.

This could impact the Libby jury in a crucial way: Every afternoon, around this time, the cafeteria workers will deliver "cookies" up to the jury room. Today, unless somebody has waders, or unless the jury is actively seeking a "mistrial via salmonella," there will be no cookie delivery.

This is not exactly the tough love we had been hoping the judge would impose on this jury to get them to reach a verdict. But, it is a start.

Reports that the bathroom discharge problems were caused by reporters/producers at A Network That Shall Not Be Named have not been confirmed.

We tried to get Shuster to tell us what network he was referring to in the final line, but he refused to confirm and mumbled something cryptic about "nobody you watch."

FDL: http://www.firedoglake.com/

Either of the two, both are so full of it.

Would that be Fux?

And more than half the courthouse was without power and people stuck in elevators. Good grief.

:loveya: :)

That is so funny. Love your sense of humor.

I was being serious!

:)

At least WE don't have to be within 15 minutes of Prettyman while we wait.

David: :toast:

Just FYI. Not necessarily relevant.

Jurors usually don;t like to finish jury service and go right back to work the next day. They typically like to have a weekend afterwards.

This is looking like we may not get a verdict until next week:

"Word up on the jury request–the jury has asked to leave tomorrow at 2 to attend to some issues they can't attend to over the weekend. Walton granted it. But there is apparently one more thing."

Judge said that if they had a question, they should ask him. He then sent them home for the night. Be back tomorrow.

and why they can't have one

"From Jane:

Pach and I just got back from the courtroom. The jury is having a high old time together. They were to a one grinning from ear to ear, giggling, having the time of their lives. Pach noted that none of them looked at Libby, and they did not seem like a group of people who were in disharmony — there wasn't one who was hanging back, nobody was pissed at somebody who was intractable. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the process.

As Pach and I were heading to the elevators, I told him that I suspected that the thing that was happening to the jury is what happened to people on the blogs who got into this story — they got addicted to it. They're busy sorting through the details, peeling back layers of the onion, fascinated by the process of mutual discovery as they explore the characters and events that led up to the trial. Pach said in his shrinky expert opinion that this made a lot of sense.

I didn't get the feeling we're getting out of here any time soon."

Pach noted that none of them looked at Libby

"To Kill a Mockingbird" fans will understand my quiet glee. :)

in almost every case when they are led into the courtroom for the verdict to be read if it is guilty they don't look at the defendant. The OJ jurors looked at OJ and smiled as they went into the courtroom.

n/t

“The below dispatch was filed on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon, Judge Reggie Walton called the attorneys for the government and the defense in the Libby trial into court. Why? The jury had sent him two requests. The jurors asked if they could cut out early on Friday at 2:00 pm. They also asked for a dictionary. The judge said yes to the Friday escape. He said no to the dictionary, explaining to the jury that if they had any questions about the definition of any word used in the instructions or the evidence they should consult with him, not a dictionary.

The meaning of all this? The jury is plowing ahead. And the jurors seem to be presuming they will not be done on Friday. As the judge said to the lawyers, "I assume they will not have a verdict tomorrow." But they are not yet stuck. Most of the jurors actually looked happy when they appeared in court. They did not appear frustrated, fed-up or upset. So the bottom-line hunch: they have a plan for reviewing the evidence and rendering a verdict--and there will be no resolution until next week.” Cont….

“So what do these two notes mean? They suggest the jury is still hard at work, in the weeds, plodding through the details of the case--after six days of deliberation. The eleven jurors--one juror was booted because she came into contact with outside information on the case--are even on to their second easel pad. From that you can draw your own conclusions. I'm not making any guesses.”


http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=170795

What a historical treasure those notes would be, especially if the verdict is guilty.

(My guess is that they go into a shredder and all we get are the verdict forms.)

IMHO. they've had enough time to come up with a decision. How can they anticipate that they still won't be able to reach a verdict tomorrow? According to accounts they seem to be a very together group. In addition, everyone has been judging whether a verdict is close by the way the jurors are dressed. So tomorrow they want to be out by 2pm, for teacher's conferences for which they will be well dressed. Makes me wonder if they will catch everyone by surprise.

the only way people should be caught by surprise by anything, is if they are not paying attention. I will be paying attention on Friday.

I know my fellow Plamologists are as eager as I am to see justice served. Hey - I remember when all sorts of posters were capping on H2Oman back in '05, because he was always optimistic even when things were moving so slowly. But here we are, at The Point of the Spear in an absolutely epic Constitutional struggle.

Those of us who followed the Plame threads all these years know there is so much more to the struggle than Scooter, prince of the Black Arts though he may be, that it staggers the imagination. This is why I am going to have a very good weekend, knowing that whatever irritation I might feel about the long deliberations, I chuckle to contemplate the weekend the defendant is going to have.

His entire world, wife, money, home, kids, friends, former and future employers, his network at risk. Everything hangs in the balance while the jury takes a long, long look at the evidence. And the longer they stay motivated to do a thorough job, the worse it is for Team Libby.

Do you think he'll sleep much? Wake up at 3:00am in a sweat? Or go to bed at 3:00am in a drunken stupor? Inquiring minds want to know! Where is good investigative journalism when we need it? Are they ALL down in the Bahamas for the festivit..oops funeral? Will our favorite corpse-chaser speculate whether or nay Anna's ugly little puppy will be interred in the tomb with her beloved?

I can imagine some juror thinking to himself right now "I cannot believe I am in a group of people about to toss a ***metaphorical*** hand-grenade ***metaphorical*** into the OVP!"

In my book, that would actually speak better of him. But I wonder, especially after reading how he poses for the cameras, if he isn't just an arrogant little sob who has no idea that truth may be catching up with him.

of circumstances. Certainly, there is no way that the smile pasted on his face is sincere. He is many things, but he is not so stupid that he does not appreciate that Mr. Fitzgerald is a serious foe. Knowing that, he knows that Mr. Fitzgerald put on a strong case. More, his defense team failed to put on the case that they had suggested in their opening statement.

Most of all, Scooter knows that he lied to the FBI investigators, and that he was stuck with that set of lies when he faced the grand jury. Scooter Libby knows that he did not tell the truth, and he knows that Patrick Fitzgerald knows he lied.

It is a lonely experience, when you are the one losing your job. We know that Libby wept at his desk on that day when he was indicted. It is a lonely road to take, being the one person being prosecuted. And it is a lonely chair to sit in, at that defense table, when some attorneys are being paid to try to save you from sure incarceration, and you know they are not able to -- because you lied.

In the fall of 2003, when he first tried to fool the FBI investigators with some weak, ill-planned lies, it may have seemed to make sense to Scooter Libby. Maybe he believed that events in Iraq would play out very differently -- for hadn't Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith promised they would? But no one is invested in trying to advance that lie today.

I'm sure it would be humiliating for Scooter to say, "Oh, hey, I was lying." But he needs to. He needs to cooperate with Mr. Fitzgerald -- now -- and to explain why he lied, and what he was covering up.

"Libby wept at his desk on that day when he was indicted"

I do NOT have a good feeling about the jury (or most jurys for that matter). I'm afraid someone will overthink this, be intimidated (since the nature of the case involves retaliation), or hold on to some wingnutty view (we shouldn't be doing this to our leaders in a time of war).

That is, if no one in the jury has been gotten to already. Call me a pessimist, but I've been let down too many times to think they don't have something else up their sleeve for this.

It's too damned important for the admin to not try and control somehow.

blame anyone for being suspicious of our federal court system. And I think it is important that we not trust the Bush administration, because they are lying, stealing, plundering, murdering thugs, without the slightest bit of human decency. And I do not think that we should place our trust in the congress. A few of them are honorable. But it is a very few.

Yet in this case, I am confident that Scooter Libby is going to be convicted. And Judge Walton will hand down a stiff sentence.

However, nothing shocks me with juries. And I agree 100% that this is too important for forces in the administration (especially the OVP/OSP) to not try to derail justice.

Your confidence frankly freaks me out. I think it's a BAD omen, no offense. It strikes me as overly confident and tempting Fate.

What on earth makes you so sure there'll be a conviction out of this jury?

fair question. I assume that you mean me, as an individual. So I will try to give you a fair answer. To do that, I have to shift briefly from the Libby trial per say, to the less interesting topic of my beliefs.

As I have said, I'm confident that Scooter will be convicted. But juries do not shock me -- so if he is not convicted, I'm fully prepared to go forward from that point.

Earlier in this thread, a friend recalled in 2005, when others thought I was wrong to believe that the investigation was going forward, and that there would be positive results. I recall in 2005, I explained my thinking by using a quote from someone far more intelligent than I, that "everything is exactly as it should be, or it wouldn't be."

I grew up in a world very different than most people in the USA, including most DUers. I'm not saying better, or worse. Just different. And as I explained to a friend last night, while most Americans (and DUers) tend to view things in the context of the old glass that is either half-empty, or half-full ..... I was taught as a youth that the glass is actually very full .... have full of water, and half full of air, and we all require both water and air to remain alive.

Martin Luther King, Jr was correct when he said that "we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of dedicated individuals ..." And, as he used to quote, "the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

That's why I'm confident that there will be a conviction, but prepared to go forward, either way.

Were he still at work in the most powerful assistant role in recent White House history, he would be beating the drums to smite Iran. Now, he is not playing footsie with the press to be a mirror for his smoke and disintel, he's not intimidating dissidents.

He's thinking, 'What is prison really like?'.

Prison is a scarey place, even for big, strong guys who know how to fight.

To us this is a slam dunk. He lied. Guilty. What in hell can they be debating about? And asking to leave early for the weekend? Jeezus, you're a jury in an important case. At least put in your time like the rest of us working stiffs.

LIED:

–noun 1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.

3. an inaccurate or false statement.

4. the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.

5. –verb (used without object) 5. to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.

6. to express what is false; convey a false impression.

–verb (used with object) 7. to bring about or affect by lying (often used reflexively): to lie oneself out of a difficulty; accustomed to lying his way out of difficulties.

—Idioms8. give the lie to, a. to accuse of lying; contradict.
b. to prove or imply the falsity of; belie: His poor work gives the lie to his claims of experience.

9. lie in one's throat or teeth, to lie grossly or maliciously: If she told you exactly the opposite of what she told me, she must be lying in her teeth. Also, lie through one's teeth.


Just trying to help...:shrug: