By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Thursday, June 7, 2007

All eyes at Scooter Libby's sentencing hearing were on . . . BlackBerrys. How Washington is that? Just when you thought the last refuge from the addictive little devices were church and courtroom, turns out everybody was reading e-mail or texting at the trial.

Some observers assumed Court TV's Savannah Guthrie was messaging news of Judge Reggie Walton's ruling Tuesday because of her flying thumbs. After all, she scooped everyone with news of Libby's verdict in March. But no -- Guthrie says she was just gathering color for a later story; her producers heard the sentence from a live media feed. "The rule is that you're not supposed to transmit information from the courtroom," she told us yesterday. "But the truth is -- and I'm not alone -- people tend to sneak a peek at their BlackBerry during slow moments during the trial."

Libby's defense attorney Ted Wells regularly checked his, as did other lawyers and reporters who posted updates from theirs. Our colleague Carol Leonnig reports that Walton initially banned the gadgets from Libby's trial -- but neither explicitly permitted nor outright banned them during the sentencing. That's lenient compared with Alexandria, where no electronic devices are allowed inside the federal courts -- during the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, an enterprising deli owner offered (for a small fee) to babysit anything that beeped.

Still the biggest courtroom sin? Cellphones. "I'm completely paranoid about making sure that thing doesn't ring in there," said Guthrie. "I haven't seen judges haul people away for it, but you have to be careful."

· Ryan Gosling with a large party enjoying shrimp brochettes, fajitas and a mariachi band at Dupont's Lauriol Plaza Tuesday night. The heartthrob Oscar nominee was in town for two days of lobbying on the crisis in northern Uganda, a cause now catching up to Darfur in terms of drawing Hollywood firepower. Tall for a movie star.

· Benjamin McKenzie (blue tee, jeans, black ball cap) lunching at Capitol Hill's Market Inn yesterday with a man and two women. Oh, and reading the Style section. The former "O.C." star (and U-Va. grad) was also here for Uganda meetings, though doing more listening than lobbying, according to the Center for American Progress, which hosted him at an event. Shorter than you expect, but not that short.

· NBA Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins lunching at McCormick & Schmick's on K Street yesterday. The slam-dunk artiste, now an Atlanta Hawks exec, dined alfresco (soft-shell crabs, beers) with some other business suits. Oh, and he's tall.

An update on our ongoing research about VIP jury duty in D.C. Superior Court. As we've already learned, high-profile former prosecutors usually get excused from juries, probably because the defense figures they're biased, while former mayors and big-deal administration figures are just too distracting to keep on the panel. But media bigwigs? Not only was our own Don Graham put on a jury this spring, so now is Robert Novak. The columnist spent his second day yesterday on an assault-with-intent-to-rob case in the courtroom of Judge John M. Mott.

"I somehow knew that this was going to be an uplifting experience. I just didn't realize to what extent."

-- Itzhak Perlman at Tuesday's gala for the American Friends of Lubavitch at the Commerce Department's Mellon Auditorium, after the virtuoso violinist and his wheelchair got stuck in a malfunctioning lift between the floor and stage for nearly 30 minutes before his performance.