John Dean: Scooter Libby’s Appeal: The Focus Shifts To the Highly Political U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Findlaw’s Writ
Excerpt:
A Test for the Rule of Law: Will Judge Walton’s Well-Reasoned Ruling Stand?
Judge Walton, it bears remembering, was appointed to the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by George W. Bush. Clearly, he is a no-nonsense jurist. The law under which he is sending Libby to prison, rather than allowing him to remain free on bond, is a hard nosed statute that the Reagan Republicans pushed through Congress, the Bail Reform Act of 1984. (I have not checked but it seems overwhelmingly likely that Dick Cheney would have helped enact this law, since he served as the House’s Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee from 1981 to 1987.) The law was part of efforts by conservatives to make life difficult for all criminals, even white-collar criminals….
There are ten active judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia of whom seven are Republicans and three are Democrats. In addition, there are four senior status judges of whom three are Republicans and one is a Democrat. In short, this court is composed of ten Republicans and four Democrats. It does not require a statistician to appreciate that the probability of Libby drawing a three-judge panel composed of at least two Republicans (a majority) is therefore extremely high.
If this court stays Libby’s sentence, that will be a grievous mistake. Judge Walton has taken care to scrupulously follow the law, and he has clearly set aside the fact he was appointed by a Republican president. If the panel deciding upon the stay should overrule Judge Walton, that result ought send shudders through the land — because it will mean the rule of law has become secondary to party loyalty.
So we’ll see. I would be stunned if a GOP-majority panel or, indeed, any panel gave Scooter Libby a pass.
HL’s Take
If the appeals court does not overturn Judge Walton, will it then go to The Supreme Court? Will they then vote 5-4 in Libby’s favor. Will they do this so Libby won’t spill the beans and implicate Cheney, the most powerful man in the world? I do love to see Republicans getting caught up in the “get tough on crime” legislation that they themselves passed. Poetic Justice, (and actual justice) at it’s finest.
