Libby convicted of 4 counts

The hoary cliché is that a long jury deliberation is not good for the defendant proved to be true in this instance.

Former White House Aide Libby Found Guilty on 4 of 5 Charges - WSJ.com - By EVAN PEREZ, JESS BRAVIN and KARA SCANNELL: A federal jury found I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, guilty of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation that originated from the leak into the identity of a CIA operative. ... Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he was gratified by the verdict. “The results are actually sad,” he added. “It's sad that we had a situation where a high level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did.”

The jury, which was reduced to 11 jurors after one juror was dismissed after being exposed to case-related information, found Mr. Libby guilty of four of the five counts he faced. He was found not guilty of one charge of false statements. Sentencing for Mr. Libby was set for June 5 -- he faces up to 30 years in prison, though under federal sentencing guidelines likely will receive far less.

The verdict caps a nearly six-week federal trial that enthralled the nation's capital as current and former administration officials and famous journalists testified about a key period in the summer of 2003 as criticism began mounting over the Iraq invasion and the search for weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

Mr. Libby was indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from statements he made to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and a grand jury looking into the public disclosure of the name of a former CIA operative, who is married to a critic of the Bush administration.

Mr. Fitzgerald never charged anyone with leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, the former CIA employee, despite the fact that early into his three-year investigation, he knew the original leaker was Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state.

...
Mr. Fitzgerald pursued perjury-related charges. Under ferocious criticism, he proceeded to interview President Bush and Mr. Cheney and dragged reporters before a grand jury to testify about conversations with confidential sources, an effort which landed former New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail until she relented. Once he indicted Mr. Libby, right-leaning activists and Mr. Libby's supporters portrayed him as a prosecutor run amok.

In an unusual twist, the prosecution case depended heavily on the credibility of journalists. Ms. Miller bolstered Mr. Fitzgerald's argument that Mr. Libby lied about learning about Ms. Plame during a phone call with Mr. Russert, the NBC television host, on July 10, 2003. Ms. Miller said Mr. Libby told her about Ms. Plame twice, well before the Russert phone call. Similarly, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, testifying under an immunity deal with prosecutors, told the jury that Mr. Libby told him about Ms. Plame during a lunch meeting three days before the call with the NBC newsman. Mr. Russert himself testified he couldn't have told Mr. Libby about Ms. Plame because he didn't learn about it until he read a July 14 article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Mr. Libby's defense, as put forth by a team of top-notch defense lawyers led by Mr. Wells and William Jeffress, was that he didn't intentionally lie, but rather had “mis-recollections” that he blamed on faulty memory. Indeed, Messrs. Wells and Jeffress fiercely questioned the memory of reporters and managed to shake at least some of them, most notably Ms. Miller, who finally acknowledged that she couldn't be certain she didn't learn about Ms. Plame from someone other than Mr. Libby.

We'll see what the results mean in terms of appeals and pardons soon enough.

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