Libby Trial: Selecting a Jury

As jury selection continues in the case of U.S. vs Libby, I thought I’d highlight a couple of good sources for anyone who wants to review.

Firedoglake has some amazing live blogging by Pachacutec, who is with the press corps, watching the proceedings on live video monitors. The comments are fascinating, with many notable experts such as Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel), and even Joe Wilson himself, weighing in.

Pach’s daily recaps are a good overview, as are similar ones by David Corn at The Nation

Another interesting read is the official list of questions being asked of potential jurors. Two notable themes in the list are a set of questions about jurors’ feelings about the Bush Administration and Dick Cheney in particular, and a set of questions about their feelings regarding the nature of memory.

Apparently, the Libby team is either hoping that jurors will accept Cheney’s credibility over anyone who testifies against Libby, or they are hoping to use Cheney’s lack of popularity to keep anyone with half a brain off of the jury!

This headline seemed to capture it all:

Libby Seeks Jurors Who Trust Cheney

That's quite a task! From the looks of most polls on approval ratings, they might as well be seeking monkeys who can write computer code, or jockeys who can dunk a basketball, or WMD in Iraq – but hey, they are entitled to their strategery, such as it is!

As for memory, it sounds like the Libby team wants jurors who would believe that it is transient, and that Libby could reasonably “remember” things that are inaccurate.

To me, this question from the official list says the most about the Libby strategy:

Is there anyone who feels that a person could not honestly say something about a matter he or she truly believes to be true when that person several months earlier actually said something totally different about that same matter?

Paraphrased, this question could be shortened to “Can a person honestly believe his own lies?”

An interesting bit of information from Firedoglake had to do with the fact that reporters in the courtroom (there are only two at a time) have said that Libby has been taking copious notes throughout the proceedings. I guess this could either be seen as his meticulous nature, which is at odds with the defense that he carelessly forgot what he told people . . . or he could be trying to set himself up for what I will refer to as “The Memento Defense.”


Image from Wonkette