A former White House aide who had his 2 and 1/2 year prison sentence for obstruction of justice commuted to no jail time by President Bush, I. Lewis Libby Jr., will be required to serve two years supervised release similar to probation, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
However, Judge Reggie Walton said he reached that conclusion "with great reservation" and he also delivered a forceful rebuttal to Mr. Bush's assertion that the sentence imposed in the case was too severe.
"It is fair to say that the Court is somewhat perplexed as to how its sentence could be accurately characterized as ‘excessive,'" Judge Walton wrote in a footnote to his 10-page opinion upholding Libby's probation. "Although it is certainly the president's prerogative to justify the exercise of his constitutional commutation power in whatever manner he chooses (or even to decline to provide a reason for his actions altogether), the Court notes that the term of incarceration imposed in this case was determined after a careful consideration of each of the requisite statutory factors … and was consistent with the bottom end of the applicable sentencing range as properly calculated under the United States Sentencing Guidelines."
The White House had no immediate comment on the ruling.
Judge Walton also suggested that Mr. Bush's contention that the sentence was too long flew in the face of the position his administration took in a Supreme Court case decided last month. In that case, a military veteran with no criminal record applicable to the guidelines, Victor Rita, was sentenced to 33 months for obstruction of justice.
Judge Walton noted that the Justice Department took the position that Rita's sentence was reasonable. The judge also noted that Attorney General Gonzales recently urged Congress to restore the sentencing guidelines to the binding status they had before the Supreme Court ruled them to be advisory in 2005.
As for the supervised release, Judge Walton said the president's authority to convert the sentence to what amounts to probation appeared to be within the scope of a 1974 Supreme Court decision, Schick v. Reed, that upheld the president's right to covert a sentence of death into life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
3 comments:
Now I do admire Judge Walton and he knows how to use his words to make his point. Now the convicted felon will have to be supervised and if he gets a job those lunch hours might be with his probation officer. I loved the way Judge Walton put Bush in his place in a way saying he's full of himself and uneducated in law.
Jackie,
That is why there is difference between a leader who is giving a title and a leader who earned a title. Anyone can be given a title but leadership is not given. Leadership is earned. Here is a judge who earned his title to discipline, an uneducated derelict President who was given a title, on law 101.
Yes, Judge Walton with great reservation......what else could he do?
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