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Libby 'Pilloried' For Leak, Panel Members Believed
The 11 jurors who convicted Libby on all but one count were, in several respects, atypical of the District's population. In a city that is heavily Democratic and where attention to politics runs high, the jurors were a largely apolitical group. Under careful questioning during jury selection, Libby's attorneys weeded out members of the large initial jury panel who said they held strong negative views of the Bush administration -- and even ones who said they followed news and politics closely.
In a city that is majority African American, all but two members of the jury -- both women -- were white. In addition, the jury was highly educated, including three members with PhDs.
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VIDEO | Denis Collins, a member of the Lewis Libby jury, said Tuesday that the alleged conversations between Libby and Tim Russert played a primary role in the decision to find a guilty verdict in the case.
More on the Libby Trial The perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff calls up high-profile witnesses.
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The jury began its deliberations Feb. 21 with 12 members. But a woman in her 70s who holds a doctorate in art history was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton last week after telling fellow jurors that she had been exposed to outside information about Libby -- a violation of the judge's instructions.
The jury chose as its forewoman an accountant who works at the law firm Hogan & Hartson.
According to Collins, the tenor of deliberations was cool. Sitting in armchairs around the conference tables, with an adjacent office for phone calls to home and work, he said: "We were in a cocoon." To begin, the jury members used the large Post-it pages they had procured from the court to detail each witness's testimony, motivation to tell the truth, believability and state of mind.
"We took about a week just to get all these little building blocks there . . . We reached no decision quickly."
"In the end," Collins said, "what we came up with was that Mr. Libby either was told by or told to people about Mrs. Wilson at least nine times."
After reaching the verdict on the last charge at 11:15 yesterday morning, Collins said the jurors displayed little emotion. But after they filed out of the courtroom slightly more than an hour later, their verdict rendered, several wept as they walked through a corridor toward Walton's chambers for a final meeting with the judge.
Collins said he interpreted the tears as the release of pent-up tension from the long, celebrated trial. "It was not," he said, because jurors were thinking, " 'Oh, we're sorry to see Libby convicted.' "
Staff writer Christopher Lee and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
