Fitzfong Has To Be a Little Worried

RUSH: Big news this morning: A juror was dismissed from the Lewis Libby trial “after court officials learned she had been exposed to information about the case over the weekend,” meaning she had accessed media! “U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the juror removed, saying ‘what she had exposure to obviously disqualifies her.’ The judge declined to say what information the juror had seen…” He then questioned the remaining jurors individually saying they “had not been tainted.” He would allow deliberations to continue with eleven jurors rather than calling on one of the two alternate jurors: Walton said that they should continue with their deliberations. “I will emphasize again the importance of not having contact with any outside information.” Now, there’s some interesting things about this, although it’s difficult to know what to make of it. It’s really risky to start trying to analyze what’s going on in a jury room, in a courtroom when you’re watching the jury react to testimony, but normally…
I think the prosecutor here, Mr. Fitzfong, has to be a little concerned over this. They’ve been out there two and a half, three days, something like that. They’ve been deliberating. This is just a simple case of lying to a grand jury. You have to wonder what’s taking the jury so long. Either Libby lied or he didn’t lie to the grand jury. So what this means to me is… Well, I don’t know what it means. I’m guessing. It seems to me then the jury is probably looking at the testimony of other witnesses, and if they are doing that, and IF (capital I, capital F: IF) they are anywhere near objective, then they have to wonder about this case, as we all have. Now, this is also interesting. Fitzfong wanted a 12th juror. He wanted one of the alternates in there. The defense did not. The defense is perfectly happy, they said, to go with 11 jurors.
So that tells me that the defense team is obviously feeling better about the deliberations and the way they’re going than Fitzfong is. It could also mean that the defense doesn’t like the first alternate, and federal rules allow in a circumstance like this for a jury of 11 to continue. So there has to be some concern here, because if this is simply lying to the grand jury, how does it take four hours, four days, two and a half days, whatever it is, to figure this out? I am just surmising here, ladies and gentlemen. I will make a prediction to you, and that is that if this case ends up in a mistrial or an acquittal, we will hear about it for two hours from the Drive-By Media and then they will forget it. They will drop it like a hot potato and forget that it ever happened.