Libby Appeal Judges Named - FireDogLake

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Team Libby has filed its motion for appeal with the DC Circuit today. I just got a copy of the filing notice in my in-box, and it contains information regarding the assignment of the three-judge panel that we talked about earlier. Libby has drawn Judges Sentelle, Henderson and Tatel as his assigned three-judge panel.

I have been wondering if this would happen — since Sentelle, Henderson and Tatel had already been immersed in prior filings in this matter, and Federal judges generally give some priority to assigning judges who have a history of past work on a matter for judicial economy reasons, so that someone else won’t have to go back over the same ground all over again needlessly. (See here for the general rules that govern assignment of federal circuit judges to matters at bar.)

As a bit of a recap on the prior work that Judges Sentelle, Henderson and Tatel have done on this case, I’m going to take you back briefly to a prior post of Jane’s:

{Just to recap a bit: On February 15, 2005 Judges Tatel, Henderson and Sentelle handed down a decision saying that Judy Miller and Matt Cooper could not claim journalistic privilege and refuse to testify in the CIA leak case. Eight pages were redacted from Judge Tatel’s concurrence, and people have been speculating wildly ever since about their contents. Dow-Jones filed a motion saying that the eight pages should now be released, and Fitzgerald is agreeing to release certain sections.}

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Link: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/06/20/luck-of-the-draw/

Ok DUdiggers, is this a good thingy, or a bad thingy?

:shrug:

... that it's pretty good. In that very post.

:bounce:

:woohoo:

the section from one of Mr. Fitzgerald's pre-sentencing documents that I quoted frequently, where he quoted Judge Tatel's opinion from the Miller appeal; Judge Tatel noted that the Libby case involved serious national security issues -- espionage and leaking Plame's name -- and that because Libby had lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury, that his prosecution was actually a valid substitute for prosecution of the underlying crimes.

that ruling on miller and cooper shows how those judges felt about the the investigation....libby is going to have wait till the boy pardons him

:hide::scared::hide:

Unless Team Libby can make one Hell of a good constitutional argument for it.

not enough time for this session and the year is an election..bush will have to do the deed

release certain sections..i think he`s sitting on something.

I mean, unless there was a gag order on any 'sensitive' or excessive information possibly prejudicial to an ongoing case, is this a normal procedure?

I thought decisions were a public matter.

could the sections he wants to keep under wraps is the link between the whitehouse-miller-bridgeport,il trial? that`s why he wants millers ass...he knows someone at the times blew his case.

i remember these judges saying something scathing about the case..and they had looked at national security stuff..anyone have that old article??

i will check my files..

fly

Kenneth Starr may have given the coup de grace to the special prosecutor law, but U.S. Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle may have done more to doom the post-Watergate reform.

A protégé of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., Sentelle was the judge who ran the three-judge panel that picked Starr and other conservatives to investigate President Clinton and his senior aides.

Like Starr, Sentelle testified about the independent-counsel law before the Senate Governmental Operations Committee on April 14. While confining his comments to the nuts and bolts of the selection process, Sentelle dropped tantalizing clues about how conservative Republicans hijacked the special-prosecutor apparatus and turned it to their political advantage.

In his testimony, Sentelle acknowledged that he sought out Republicans "who had been active on the other side of the political fence" to carry out the investigations of Clinton and his administration. Starr and other Sentelle-picked prosecutors then transformed fairly petty transgressions into major federal criminal cases and even a constitutional crisis.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/c041799b.html

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Forgive me if I say Sentelle on this appeals panel makes me a little nervous.

- as

http://foi.missouri.edu/whistleblowing/judgesskeptical.html

Judges Skeptical of First Amendment Protection for Reporters in C.I.A. Leak Inquiry

By ADAM LIPTAK
New York Times
December 9, 2004


Judge Henderson was appointed by the first President George Bush, Judge Sentelle by President Ronald Reagan and Judge Tatel by President Bill Clinton.


snip:

The reporters were held in contempt of court in October by Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the Federal District Court here. Judge Hogan ordered them jailed until a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, completed its work or for 18 months, whichever was shorter. He suspended the sentences during the appeal.
The appeals court did not indicate when it would rule. Lawyers involved in the case said they expected a decision as soon as weeks from now, which would be fast by judicial standards.
If the reporters lose, they may ask the full court, known as the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, or the Supreme Court to hear the case. The reporters, who attended the arguments on Wednesday, would most likely remain free until all appeals were concluded.





snip:

Judge Tatel was the only judge who seemed prepared to consider a separate basis for protecting the journalists. The reporters had relied on a 1996 Supreme Court case that recognized legal protection for confidences that patients tell their psychotherapists. Similarly, their lawyers argued that the fact that 49 states and the District of Columbia offered journalists some protection meant that federal courts should recognize a similar protection. The argument, based on federal common law, avoids Branzburg and the First Amendment.

Judge Tatel was impatient with Mr. Abrams's contention that this second sort of protection should be absolute. Instead, he suggested that the protection should turn on a balancing of the importance of the information in the grand jury's investigation, its availability from people other than journalists and perhaps the importance of the case itself against the societal interest in the information confidential sources provide.



snip:

Judge Sentelle appeared skeptical that protection for journalists was warranted or practical, whether under the First Amendment or the common law. "You're asking us to create not only a new common law privilege but also a privilege greater than any other privilege known to the law," he said. "You just shut down leak investigations if we give you this privilege."