THE RIGHT RESPONSE. Responses from the right to the Libby verdict are starting to come in, though they have not yet gelled, so they're sort of interesting. The general tenor, not surprisingly, is one of despairing disappointment. There seems to be an impulse to blame the jurors, but I don't think that's going to fly, based in part on my sense of what the juror who spoke to reporters today had to say and the fact that the jury asked a bunch of questions focused on the count (Count 3) that they ultimately acquitted Libby on, suggesting that they were not confused but uncertain about their verdict on that count and determined to be as meticulous about deciding as possible.
So, for instance, Mark R. Levin at The Corner is confused when he says that "This case doesn't stand for the truth when jurors are confused about instructions and basic concepts like 'reasonable doubt' days and hours before handing down their verdict, after 9-10 days of deliberation." The jurors' question was specifically about applying reasonable doubt to the doubtful Count 3, not about reasonable doubt in general. They were not confused about reasonable doubt itself; they were being careful about how they used the standard in the count about which they had the most doubt.
Likewise, Levin later picks up on a comment the juror made about Karl Rove, noting "As I think about it, 'where's Rove' tells me that the jurors wanted to convict others at the White House who hadn't been charged. It turns out this jury was a prosecutor's dream." But of course Levin seems to forget that it was the defense that prominently brought up Rove's role, casting Rove as the beneficiary of a White House plot to scapegoat Libby. The fact that the defense's opening gambit worked to some degree hardly seems cause for criticizing the jury as a prosecutor's dream. If anything, it suggests that Libby's defense made an error in not calling Rove to the stand.
I suspect by the end of the day, commentators on the right will have given up blaming the jury and will turn to more likely suspects: Patrick Fitzgerald, Joe Wilson, and now Judge Reggie Walton, as well as the MSM, particularly NBC -- which I see Kathryn Jean Lopez and the redoubtable Tom Maguire already have in their sights.
--Jeff Lomonaco
