Posted on 03/07/2007 7:40:14 AM PST by txradioguy
NEW YORK Denis Collins, the juror in the Libby/CIA leak case who delivered a post-verdict commentary for the press, spent about a decade at The Washington Post. Today, after a night on cable TV shows, he re-appears with a massive recounting of his experience at the Huffington Post blog.
His story is billed as "INSIDE THE JURY ROOM: WHAT THE JURY THOUGHT, DAY BY DAY, WITNESS BY WITNESS, AT THE SCOOTER LIBBY TRIAL" by Denis Collins, Juror #9. It calls it "unedited" impressions, memories and facts. Other jurors' names are changed.
The New York Times today reports that he is a registered Democrat. He recalls that he revealed when considered for the jury that he had worked with Bob Woodward for three or four years and also with the Post's Walter Pincus, another witness at the trial. Until a year ago, Tim Russert was a neighbor and he even attended backyard barbeques at Russert's place. But attorneys at both tables merely offered "ain't this a small town" grins, he relates.
He adds that he went to grade school with the Times' Maureen Dowd, who allegedly had a crush on Collins' brother.
One of the lawyers asked him the subject of his 2005 book. "You wrote about the CIA?" Collins said yes, which along with his reporting connections amounted to the "perfect storm." He comments: "Yet here I am," on the CIA leak case jury.
If they don't give him a new trial or a pardon...it will be a great travesty of justice.
A good lawyer might be able to find enough ammo to impeach these jurors own admission in their pre-trial questioners.
Two reasons they didn't go after the guy who "confessed". First is the fact that no crime was committed and second is the fact that Armitage didn't lead them to the white house.
Makes you wonder what the heck Libby's attorney was thinking... Amazing.
I'm reminded of the Dustin Hoffman/Gene Hackman movie of a few years back, where the activist wanted to get rid of guns and decided that getting himself onto a jury was the best way to pursue his political agenda. But I'm sure that could never happen in real life.
You can bet that with this POS in the jury room, no matter what the rest of the idiots first thought, he was going to stay there until they got a conviction. 12 angry men in reverse. He was one of the better educated, knew the witnesses, wrote about the CIA and had to be viewed by the jury as an "expert". Libby's lawyers were a bunch of dopes.
IMO, Federal trails for nationally elected officials serving in DC should have juries composed of people from across the country, not DC proper.
For the life of me I cannot figure out why his attorneys did not object to this juror. He's had horrible legal advice throughout this process.
How could Libby's lawyer let this guy on the jury???
Incredible. So the MSM had a mole on the Libby Jury.
Libby's lawyers should be disbarred for allowing this A$$hole to be a member of the jury.
This decision shows why DC has become a bed of illiterate liberal idiots.
This decision is more dangerous to White Conservative Males than Ben Laden and al Qaeda. Now we can be found guilty for any imaginary crime the liberals come up with.
Sandy Berger walks with an admitted act of theft of top secret documents and treason. Libby is charged and found guilty with an imaginary crime.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1796418/posts
Real Story Behind CIA Leak
Fox News Corp. ^ | 3-6-07 | John Gibson
Excerpt from this oped by John Gibson:
In any event Libby is a Republican and works for Dick Cheney to some liberals and to the media that in itself deserves Capital Punishment.
In contrast the national security advisor to President Bill Clinton, risking his livelihood, and his liberty stole classified documents from the national archives and destroyed them. He knew that this was a crime but the travesty is that he stole these documents in the midst of a bi-partisan commission's investigation into the terrorist attacks of 911. The implication of this act is treason.
The key questions, still unanswered are who was Mr. Berger covering up for? Was it his own mistakes as National Security Advisor that would be embarrassing to be made public by the 911 commission? Or, was he in fact covering up for mishandlings by Bill Clinton? History will never be able to re-create facts that were in those destroyed documents and therefore we may never know why the government failed to stop 911 from happening.
Almost 3000 Americans were murdered and the crime to cover up the facts surrounding that is largely unpunished. Mr. Berger is a liberal Democrat who worked for former President Bill Clinton. Being a Liberal Democrat who worked for the media beloved Bill Clinton got him a pass. So much for the balanced scales of justice.
Let's pretend LIBBY was found "NOT GUILTY" on all charges, then this came out about juror Denis Collins:
Denis Collins, the juror in the Libby/CIA leak case who delivered a post-verdict commentary for the press, spent about a decade at The Washington Post National Review. Today, after a night on cable TV shows, he re-appears with a massive recounting of his experience at the Huffington Post blog on the Rush Limbaugh show.
His story is billed as "INSIDE THE JURY ROOM: WHAT THE JURY THOUGHT, DAY BY DAY, WITNESS BY WITNESS, AT THE SCOOTER LIBBY TRIAL" by Denis Collins, Juror #9. It calls it "unedited" impressions, memories and facts. Other jurors' names are changed.
The New York Times today reports that he is a registered Democrat Republican. He recalls that he revealed when considered for the jury that he had worked with Bob Woodward William Kristol for three or four years and also with the Post'sWeekly Standard's Walter Pincus Fred Barnes, another witness at the trial. Until a year ago, Tim Russert Cal Thomas was a neighbor and he even attended backyard barbeques at Russert's Thomas's place. But attorneys at both tables merely offered "ain't this a small town" grins, he relates.
He adds that he went to grade school with the Times' syndicated columnistMaureen Dowd Ann Coulter, who allegedly had a crush on Collins' brother.
One of the lawyers asked him the subject of his 2005 book. "You wrote about the CIA?" Collins said yes, which along with his reporting connections amounted to the "perfect storm." He comments: "Yet here I am," on the CIA leak case jury.
IF this were the story about Denis Collins, you'd be hearing about it left and right, non-stop.
Not really, he was already sitting up the appeal.
...a good question
From what I've been able to tell...the deck was gonna be stacked against Libby jury wise no matter how much they objected. D.C. is a Lib haven...they couldn't have found 12 "objective" jurors if you'd looked up the definition and read it to them.
Both sides get a limited amount of objections to potential jurors if I understand the selection process properly...I'm guessing that this jury was the best they could get from the pool.
Which isn't saying much.
Weren't there jury consultants on this case? What were they thinking?
Unbelievable.
I love President Bush, but if he doesn't pardon Libbey I will never forgive him.
Libbey's lawyers are brain-dead to have allowed him on the jury.
I think that once both sides accepted them as OK to serve in the jury those questions are moot. However, IMHO, if they can be shown to have lied in order to be selected you'd have a case.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the immediate "where's Rove..." press conference following the verdict would be grounds to start an investigation into annulment.
(What the hell was Libby's defene team thinking?)
Is it possible in a case like this to get a change of venue? DC has to be one of the worst places in the world to find an unbiased jury especially for a high profile Republican official being tried on trumped up charges.
You just hit the bullseye...center mass.
Agree. And none either employed by or financially dependent on government money. (That BTW would eliminate nearly everyone within the DC Beltway and for some distance beyond.)
I'm just not convinced of this. If they could end up with 10 white jurors in a city that is overwhelmingly minority, I have to suspect that they could have found some of the city's nonliberals.
You've got to realize, jury selection is very limited in Federal Courts. Generally Judges get to ask the questions and the amount of peremptory strikes is quite limited. Who knows what kind of juror was next in line to get stuck with if this guy had been stricken. Given a D.C. jury pool it is literally a situation where you have to decide on the best of the worst. The deck was stacked from the beginning. It was a reverse O.J.
If I were his lawyer...that's the motion I'd file right after my notification to the court of my intention to appeal this ruling.
Then again, Libby wasn't an elected official. Need to clarify my prior statement to include immediate staff of nationally elected officials.
> (What the hell was Libby's defene team thinking?)
Maybe they wanted grounds for appeal in case of a guilty verdict?
This guy was Juror #9 -- they couldn't have used up all the objections as they were considering Juror #9. It was clear from the interview yesterday that this guy was Fitz's representative and advocate in the jury room. He walked these jurors through a meticulous recounting of all of the "evidence" that supported Libby's conviction -- Post-It Notes tied to every witness... But let's ignore all the mis-remembering and bad memories of the many jurors. And let's accept Fitz's concluding arguments that made this trial all about getting Cheney and Bush -- making statements that were not supported by any evidence brought into the trial. And the Judge (a Bush Appointee!) allowing all of this to happen and showing outrage when Libby wasn't put on the stand!
Look up "Show-Trial" in websters and the Libby Trial will start playing on You-Tube.
Collin's remarks after the trial pretty much told the story. If he and the other jurors were wondering whey Cheney and Rove weren't on trial as Collins post-trial remarks indicated, they should never have been jury members. His remarks revealed that even though they thought Libby was innocent, they were going to convict some member of the Bush admin. Some fair trial, huh? Libby never had a chance.
AFAIK the general practice in all jurisdictions is that each side can challenge a certain number of potential jurors -- some for cause and (I think) fewer without stating a reason. There is a limit, however -- they can't just go on challenging jurors forever! Maybe they had used their limit.
Not from what I've seen from living up here. Yes the city is overwhemingly minority...but what is even more overwhemling is that within D.C. proper...it's almost 100% liberal...this is the same place where a judge told two men that they "have no right to own firearms"...if you want to find any conservatives in this area...you probably have to head down to at least Fairfax Country where I live.
Sounds to me like Libby was convicted for a crime that he was not tried for.
He might have been juror #9 during the trial...but he could have been #309 during the selection process.
If the guy's notes even mention the that Valerie Plame was a covert agent, the case will be retried.
Bingo. The drumbeat at DU is now starting for further investigation into the forgeries that started this whole thing and their speculation about Cheney's possible connection to them. I say bring it on. Wilson and Vincent Cannistraro both are on the record saying they had seen the documents before they possibly could have. If we can get to the bottom of this, we can prove what we have suspected all along...that this was an attempted coup by rogue agents and ex-agents at the CIA.
HOWEVER, Libby did recite false testimony to the investigating FBI agents prior to Fitzfool becoming the SP. Then Libby repeated and compounded the false statements to the grand jury when he only needed to claim he had trouble recalling the exact conversations. It is likely that Libby was instructed to discuss the Wilsons with reporters, because Wilson was lying about the administration and about the report he gave regarding yellow cake ... and Plame was no longer a protected agent.
The presidential pardon should be issued because this was obviously a witch hunt seeking to smear the administration.
Fitzfool is the villain most prominent in this democrat scheme so Libby really is a scapegoat, but for the democrats' scheme to get the Bush administration. The very visible lies now being spittled out by the democrats and their talking points media whores proves the scheme was/is a real assault and that Libby was their raw meat.
If you are going to base much of your defense on impeaching Russert, then I'd rather have the most liberal of libs on the jury than one of Russert's buddies.
This guy Collns was a busy beaver yesterday:
Within minutes of the reading of the verdict he had his own media fest on the street then last night he made "Larry King Live".
I bet tonight he is on Olbermann and Scarborough.
Yeah...all three of them.
An inept defence would be adequate grounds - nice plan.
My guess is that he had all of that set up prior to the verdict...he just had to make a phone call to let them know what day it was going to be read.
This smacks of John Grisham's "The Runaway Jury".
They couldn't find any registered Republicans in Washington DC. Libby should have asked for a change of venue based on that fact alone. Should have asked to have the trial in Texas.
I realize they only have so many objections. But allowing Tim Russert's neighbor?! I'll just have to assume they used all their objections by the time this guy came along.
Yeah...all three of them.
Works for me. One person who saw through Fitzfong et al could have hung the jury.
You're right. This juror used to work for Bob Woodward. He was an assistant to Woodward. The Judge told the jurors they didn't have to speak to the press so they send out their "Press Secretary" to tell us how it took them 10 days to convict a man who was obviously not guilty of anything. It took them 10 days to build up a case against Libby, when it took only 15 minuts to realize that there was more than reasonable doubt to find him not guilty. What a travesty of justice. The "Special Prosecutor" comes out and says "we will not stand for purjury". Well, where was he during the Clinton Administration? Where was this guy when Sandy Burger was stealing from the US Government?
What really makes me mad is that they think the people of this country are so stupid as to believe anything they say.
This is the extent of contempt with which they hold us.
This trial should have been held in Australia. (Kangaroo court).
I'm guessing they thought a reporter would know how slimy reporters are, and took that chance.
Though, like BillyJeff, it is likely Libby won't be a lawyer for much longer.
Did anyone ever consider this reporter to be a plant by the DNC? This is a Washington Court Room.
"And none either employed by or financially dependent on government money. "
Or any media company, radio/TV/Newspaper, etc. Political trials are just too volatile and emotional.
What an incredibly good argument for a change of venue.
I wonder how a jury in, say, Roanoke, VA would have decided this case...
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