Informed Speculation

…continue in the Libby trial.  My own take is that Libby had better hope for a hung jury (a very real possibility) - if he were going to be acquitted on all counts, I think the deliberations would be long over.  Byron York does his own tea-leaf reading here:

Other juries have settled far more complex cases in less time. But the Libby jury has given no sign that it is near the end of its work. Why?

A look at the notes the jury has sent to the judge, plus clues raised by the length (so far) of deliberations, suggest that the panel is becoming increasingly unhappy — not with each other, and not with the defense or prosecution, but with the judge’s instructions that are supposed to guide their deliberations. In addition, it appears that some jurors might have gotten so deeply entangled in the minutiae of the case — joining the ranks of what bloggers call Plameologists — that they have lost sight of the question before them.

…The fact that at least one or two jurors want more clarity on the issue of reasonable doubt might mean that they might have a fundamental difficulty with reaching a verdict — any verdict. “That would suggest that whoever is interested in that is not being led astray by some strange element of federal law, is not being led astray by the nullification defense, but has gotten themselves hung up in the epistemological aspect of not only trials, but of life,” McCarthy says. “How do I know what I know? When you have people who are hung up on that, when they start to break down things that are commonsense elemental things, that is a very bad sign in terms of getting the case resolved.”

If that is true, then the jury’s difficulties might bode well for Libby, pointing at least toward a hung jury and a mistrial. But it might also be true that the jury, or even a single member of the jury, is having trouble just with the part of the case that relates to Matthew Cooper, and that the panel has reached agreement on the parts that have to do with Tim Russert. Whatever the case, deliberations go on, and it’s impossible for those of us on the outside to say precisely why.

Stay tuned to the Minute Man for the latest developments…