On the bedside table:
Commentary: Scooter Libby: Dead Man Dancing
So Scooter Libby got his midnight reprieve. No surprise. Like Ollie North before him, Libby played the good soldier. He bravely threw himself on a live grenade to protect the platoon. The commutation of his sentence is a morphine shot that quickly deadens his pain. It's not surprising that there will be no jail time for Scooter, he was after all just a proxy for Cheney at trial. What is surprising is that Bush didn’t go ahead and issue a full pardon? Maybe they feel that through this middling approach they can keep their boy out of jail while minimizing focus on their already legendary legacy of cronyism and corruption? Or it could be a move to appeal to a usually solid base, recently fractured over immigration, without taking the full brunt of a political favoritism charge from the Dems? In the end, I figure Bush will pardon Libby after the bright-lights have dimmed, maybe as a last act in office-- like Clinton did with Susan McDougal and Marc Rich* and his brother Roger.
Incidentally, the Bush administration has regularly insisted that judges be strictly bound by sentencing guidelines, and Scooter’s sentence was well within the sentencing guidelines prescribed for the crime. Yet Bush overruled it as “excessive-- even though the case was weighed carefully by a judge and jury. After supporting actions criticized as excessive world-wide-- renditions, torture, secret jails—Bush now sees fit to undermine the spirit of our laws by sparing Scooter the rod. What are friends for?
Richard B. Schmitt and David G. Savage write in the Los Angeles Times that "Just last week, the Supreme Court upheld a 33-month prison sentence for a decorated Army veteran who was convicted of lying to a federal agent about buying a machine gun. The veteran had a record of public service -- fighting in Vietnam and the Gulf War -- and no criminal record. But Justice Department lawyers argued his prison term should stand because it fit within the federal sentencing guidelines."
The excessive sentencing debate is not a new story for George W, remember this? :
In his years as governor of Texas, his state executed over 130 prisoners -- far more than any other state. In nearly one-third of the cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at sentencing. Frequently psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical. Witnesses were furloughed from psychiatric wards to testify, and a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies was used by prosecutors. In Bush’s Texas defendants were routinely assigned untrained lawyers and appeals were rarely taken seriously.** Clemency was never granted; well almost never—Bush did relent in one case based on DNA.
When asked during the 2000 campaign whether his Texas death penalty record was excessive, then Governor Bush said repeatedly that he had no second thoughts. "I'm confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts.”
By way of comparison: between 1977 and 2000, Illinois executed 12 prisoners – during that same period Illinois freed 13 prisoners from death row on the grounds that their innocence had been subsequently proved. Nationwide, the number of death-row inmates spared execution (sometimes just in the nick of time) because they were proven innocent was 85. But in Texas, Mr. Bush confidently claimed “we've adequately answered innocence or guilt in every case.”
Sound familiar? It’s the same hubris he displayed toward Saddam Hussein and WMD. Let’s not forget the excessive sentence boy George has handed down on the Iraqis. Tens of thousands of innocent people have met an early, violent, death there. Oh well, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette I guess, Scooter on the other hand has a family and a reputation and an executive branch to protect.
The problem with pardons (and commutations) in general is that they perpetuate a view of the criminal justice system as being unfair and getting worse all the time. For the average person on the street, without powerful and rich friends, it looks bad-- what matters is not your crime but whom you know. The Libby pardon serves once more to focus the public eye on the growing disparity in America between the powerful and the powerless.
Clinton issued over 300 pardons! And Hillary is now condemning Libby's deal. Go figure...
* Lewis "Scooter" Libby represented Marc Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000. In a letter to the New York Times, Bill Clinton listed Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who supported Rich's pardon. Hmmm? (read more)
**In 1995, Bush oversaw passage of a law accelerating death-penalty appeals in Texas courts, a move defense lawyers called the ``speed the juice'' law.
4 days later in NY Times: For Libby, Bush seemed to alter his Texas policy
Cites:
San Jose Mercury News: George W. Bush: The Death Penalty Governor. Alexander Cockburn. Feb. 9, 2000
NY Times: Texas Executions: GW Bush Has Defined Himself, Unforgettably, As Shallow And Callous. Anthony Lewis. June 17, 2000
Wikipedia