… reads GUILTY!

V.P. Dick Cheney’s aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby has just been found guilty in four of five counts in his federal perjury trial.

The jury acquitted him on one count of lying to the FBI. Obstruction of justice and other counts of lying to federal authorities stand.

This is a proud moment in American justice.

I’ve never served on jury. I’ve been called a few times but have never moved far enough in the process to be empaneled. I have, however, watched countless trials and reported on them as a newspaper journalist over many years. Observing a jury is one of the most fascinating pieces of any trial — even counting the antics of lawyers, witnesses’ odd behavior, or occasional clever jokes from a judge.

Why are juries so interesting? Certainly because the outcome of a defendant’s future depends on the jury’s decision. That’s the most obvious. But there is more. Throwing together 12 strangers in a small room, then relying on their intelligence, emotions, reason, hormone levels and mental health for a unanimous verdict strikes me — always — as nothing short of amazing.

I’ve written several times at the end of a particularly notable trial about the jury. I’ve written about jury selection, too, because the way common people come to court and try to serve their fellow human beings (or not) is always fascinating. The excuses people offer, the justifications for trying to skip jury duty can be humorous. The whole process can be enraging, too.

If I were ever on trial for murder, or kidnapping, or obstruction of justice in leaking the secret name of a CIA operative, I’d want the best and brightest jurors I could find. I’d hope to do the same for them, if the tables were turned. That sense of serving each other, and in turn serving our democracy — that is the underpinning of the whole jury process, right?

In coming days, as the press and handsomely paid pundits for cable networks dissect this verdict you can expect plenty of dissing on the jury. I can’t wait, for instance, to hear what those spare parts FOX hires as “legal experts” will have to say. I can hear it now: They couldn’t handle the pile of evidence against the man; too much minutia to get through, too complex. Or this: It was 15 minutes of fame for a bunch of common citizens suddenly thrust on the national stage. They were on the public’s radar for months, and especially the past 10 days during deliberations. The power trip sidetracked them from their work.

Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, is on network news at this moment, promising to file a motion for a whole new trial. If he doesn’t get that, he’ll file for an immediate appeal. So be it. This is another beauty of the American system. Exhaust every appeal for your sorry client, sir. Go for it.

These jurors did their job. Their duty. And they did it well. In the Libby case, the American jury system was one of the remaining protections citizens have against a presidential administration that has run amok with its executive power at the expense of individual civil rights. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al have thought they could use the press for their purposes, and in many cases (can you say “embedded reporters in Iraq?”) they were right. In the case Valerie Plame case, they almost got away with their hubris. One haunting component of the Libby trial for me came early in the process, when Cheney aides testified how they sorted through the Washington press corps for the most malleable and sympathetic reporters with which to plant their tips and stories.

I know that is the way it works in the adversarial relationship between government and the press, but it’s an ugly indictment against reporters. If nothing else, this is another warning to people in my profession at every level to re-examine their reasons for doing journalism. It’s not for fame, or for Sunday TV talk shows, or to land another book deal.

Our job remains to find the truth — or the closest to it we can come. If that sounds melodramatic, fine. It’s the nearest I can come to patriotism. And I can’t come up with a better definition of a free press.

What an outcome today. What a day for freedom, justice, and free information.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under All, Politics, Community, Media, Law and Order. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.