22 January 2007

Scooter Libby's Trial

Reports from the Scooter Libby trial in Washington D.C., on NPR make it hard to feel assured that it will produce a fair trial. It seems more than coincidental that he, of all people, has ended up with an overwhelmingly white jury pool in an overhwelmingly black city. Likewise, while it is common place for parties to remove someone from a jury pool for political reasons, it is rare for jurors to be removed for cause because they disagree with the President, something that is happening in this case on a regular basis.

Admittedly, this is a special set of circumstances, but Scooter Libby's jury may be so atypical of the population from which it is drawn, and so expressly biased towards administration supporters in a place where they are as rare as hen's teeth, that it seems hard to believe that the trial will be fair.