[iron81]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Washington DC is a HEAVILY democratic city and the jury pool was heavily tainted with people who don't like Bush/Cheney.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think this is a factor, although we don't know 1. How many people were taken from the suburbs and 2. the ability of the jurors to set aside their biases. My experience is that juries do an ok but not great job of this.

[ QUOTE ]
2. The judge is probably a democrat. Why? 90% of blacks typically vote democrat and this is a Washinton DC judge. So the odds of him being a coonservative black are about 10,000:1

[/ QUOTE ]
The judge is a federal judge. The demographics in DC actually have less to do with his appointment than the demographics in the rest of the country because he was appointed by Bush (taking BDK's word for it) and DC doesn't have representation in Congress.

[ QUOTE ]
Not allowing the defense to reference previosuly presented evidence in their closing remarks is HIGHLY irregular.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, its not. In order to raise a defense, either side in a criminal trial must have a "good faith basis" to raise the claim. This means that there must be some admissible evidence supporting the claim. When Libby declined to testify, the evidence his lawyers raised was ruled inadimssible per the judge's previous instruction. Therefore, it would be improper to let them argue that theory in closing.

As for whether the judge should have ruled the evidence inadmissible, correct me if I'm wrong about the following: Libby presents a defense that he forgot about who he told what. In order to be able to make this case, you must present evidence of this. The only way the defense could do this is to put Libby on the stand and say that he forgot. The fact that the Defense was allowed to present all of this evidence and then have it ruled inadmissible makes it sould like the prosecution could easily get a mistrial if they wanted it.