I have a new story about Lewis Libby’s decision not to testify at his perjury and obstruction trial:
For the defense team, the question never hinged on whether the jury needed a chance to hear Libby talk about his role in the CIA leak affair. The question was whether the jury needed another chance to hear Libby talk about his role in the CIA leak affair. And the answer was: eight hours is enough.
Eight hours refers, of course, to the length of Libby’s earlier testimony to the grand jury. The trial jury heard a recording of it all — a laborious process that took place over three days. So by the time Libby had to decide whether to testify, the jury had already heard a lot of Lewis Libby testifying.
But — and this is a point largely unexamined by trial observers — jurors also heard a lot of Patrick Fitzgerald questioning Lewis Libby. And Libby’s defenders are betting that jurors took from those recordings an impression not only of the defendant but of the prosecutor. And the impression that Libby’s supporters hope jurors will have is that of a prosecutor trying too hard to find a crime where there was none.