Hearsay

In Abraham Lincoln's day, while the nation was divided and sundered on a human rights issue, revealing the identity of a government spy would have been viewed as an egregious act of treason.

Somebody like Lewis “Scooter” Libby (although charged only in a cover-up, not with a crime worse than perjury) could have faced a wartime vigilante firing squad, and his name relegated to the same necrology as Benedict Arnold.

The president may have been right to commute Libby's 30-month obstruction sentence, given that he is putative master of the White House from which the leak of Valerie Plame's covert CIA involvement emanated. There were other accessories, as yet unidentified officially.

And there is irony. Federal Judge Reggie Walton, who imposed the sentence, was nominated by the president as a jurist who is tough on crime and is known for going by the book that he throws at lawbreakers in meting out punishment.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel and prosecutor, noted that “an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

Fitzgerald had recommended 30 months behind bars for Libby as similar to other obstruction of justice cases, but probation officials thought 15 to 21 months would be proper. For now, he'll wear stylish suits and ties, rather than rumply orange coveralls.

There is tragedy, too. Forgotten in the flotsam of coverage and comment is the lamentable 2005 incarceration for 85 days of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, merely for knowing about – but not even writing about – the source of the leak.

The charge against Miller was contempt of court, but the issue involved a clash of principles. Hers was holding to a vow of confidentiality she made to a news source, a qualified privilege that has apparent limits.

The ABA House of Delegates in August 2005 adopted a policy in support of a reporter shield law to protect acquired information unless it is essential to a critical issue and all reasonable alternative sources have been exhausted.

Those suggestions mirrored the dissent by four justices who called for a three-way test in Branzburg. The split decision left it to Congress to mull, “sooner or later,” the necessity of defining categories of journalists who qualify for a shield privilege.

Since 1996, five journalists have served from five to 168 days in prison for testing the 1972 proscription. Courts have either upheld contempt citations or declined to hear appeals.

Judith Miller was doing her job as most journalists see it, and she heroically paid the price for allegiance to an unenforceable code. Scooter Libby's allegiances were more prescient.

The Herald News in Joliet reported last month that “Doctors and attorneys, long known for their courtroom battles, will finally take their disagreements outside”: in a winner-take-all softball contest.

Actually, both sides in the first local doctor vs. lawyer game on June 24 would turn out to be winners in the eyes of the public. The beneficiary from ticket sales and miscellaneous donations was Leeza's Place at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center.

Team captains were Edward J. Jarot Jr. of Davis, Dystrup, Hoster & Jarot, and Michael Dorning, an orthopedic surgeon. Their joint stewardship likely disposed of any subsequent injuries in a professional manner.

As one medic pointed out, relative to friction among lawyers and doctors, “By doing something like this, it makes it harder for us to judge each other and helps to bridge the gap between us.”

The softball game was contemporaneous with the release of new rules in Madison County Court that require plaintiffs and doctors to face off in settlement discussions any time a medical malpractice case is filed.

Fed up with repeated malignment of her jurisdiction as a judicial hellhole, 3rd Circuit Chief Judge Ann Callis established a committee to come up with procedural changes that might ease tension between the legal and medical professions.

“If the spirit of the rule is adhered to, if a good-faith effort is made by both parties to settle,” the new rules would be helpful, said Rex Carr, dean of the plaintiff bar in Madison County. The president of the state medical society concurred.

Play ball!