Dozens of New Jersey murder cases have been undone over the past five years after witnesses were killed, disappeared before trial or changed their stories.

In his instructions to the Libby jury, Judge Walton said, “A reasonable doubt, as the name implies, is a doubt based on reason.” He also said that “if after careful, honest and impartial consideration of all the evidence, you cannot say that you are firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt, then you have a reasonable doubt.” He also noted, however, that “the government is not required to prove guilt beyond all doubt or to a mathematical certainty or to a scientific certainty.”

Q. Thank you for meeting with me.
A.  Father Brooks asked me to do it. One of the reasons I don't do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script. One reason these stories are never told is that they are contrary to the script that people play by. The media, unfortunately, have been universally untrustworthy because they have their own notions of what I should think or I should do.

Q. Father Brooks made a point of trying to recruit a lot more African Americans to campus in the months before you came. Do you think that recruitment drive helped you?
A. Oh no. I was going to go home to Savannah when a nun suggested Holy Cross. That's how I wound up there. Your industry has suggested that we were all recruited. That's a lie. Really, it's a lie. I don't mean a mistake. It's a lie.

A. There were a lot of changes to absorb. Just to think about it was fatiguing. It's still really fatiguing. It's also fatiguing that people assume we all showed up the same. A friend of mine sent me that print there. [A sketch of an African American man, draped over a desk with his hands extended toward the floor.] He has since passed away. He thought it captured my life.
Q. Does it?
A. Oh yeah. That's why I keep it there. Look at the hand. Look at the exhaustion.
Q. What sort of exhaustion?
A. Everything. Mental. Physical. Spiritual. Just constant change. You just want to slow down. You see people take a walk and you want to, too.  

“There are those who argue that the enforcement process is, in a large part, window dressing,” Mr. Roberts added, “that it is part of keeping the commercial enterprise viable. I don’t think they are crazy.”

There are virtually no limits on the presidential power of pardon, which is granted in Article II of the Constitution. It can be exercised before a criminal investigation has formally begun, at any stage in the judicial process, during a prison term or after release, said Margaret Love, who served as United States pardon attorney in the Justice Department from 1990 to 1997.

The pardon power is enshrined in the Constitution and is completely at the president's discretion. In recent decades, presidents have been increasingly reluctant to use it for fear of political trouble. When they have exercised it in controversial cases, they typically have waited until their terms were at an end, as Clinton did with Rich, Susan McDougal, Roger Clinton and others, and as George H.W. Bush did in pardoning former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and others implicated in the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages case. Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted of a felony since that scandal.

Of course, as an inevitable pardon debate heats up, the discussion becomes all politics and no law.  There are no formal legal limits on President Bush's pardon power, so whether and how he helps Libby is all about political calculations. 

The Kuwaiti 12 case is a primer on the anatomy of a guerilla PR offensive, packaged and sold to the public as a fight for the "rule of law" and "America's core principles." Begin with flimsy information, generate stories that are spun from uncorroborated double or triple hearsay uttered by interested parties that are hard to confirm from halfway around the world. Feed the phonied-up stories to friendly media who write credulous reports and emotional human interest features, post them on a Web site where they will then be read and used as sources by other lazy (or busy) media from all over the world. In short, create one giant echo chamber....

Shearman & Sterling lawyers aren't hucksters crassly promoting a cheap product; they are sworn officers of the court volunteering to represent alien enemy combatants in a time of war, interjecting themselves in cases that affect how American soldiers on the battlefield do their job. It is one thing to take these cases in order to achieve the proper balance between due process concerns and unprecedented national security issues. It is another to hire PR and marketing consultants to create image makeovers for suspected al Qaeda financiers, foot soldiers, weapons trainers and bomb makers, all of which is financed by millions of dollars from a foreign country enmeshed in the anti-American, anti-Israel elements of Middle East politics.

For parents, contrary to ghoulish popular conception, suing on behalf of a disabled infant is not a way to get rich: The money they win goes into a trust administered for the child by a court-appointed manager. Nonetheless, the clear economic incentives (and probably Fitzgerald’s ads as well) set up the uncomfortable equation of tragedy equals cash.

For the lawyers, as much as both of them would have loved — great records be damned — to get to a verdict and find out how it ended, a trial is ultimately not about getting to a satisfying conclusion as to who was right but about getting to a number that both sides can live with.

The Supreme Court's Rule 7 bars any former clerk from participating "in any professional capacity in any case" before it for two years after they leave. That includes helping or advising their firms on upcoming cases before the court. So the specific expertise they were hired for is on ice for two years.

As the new technologies proliferate, even the neurolaw experts themselves have only begun to think about the questions that lie ahead. Can the police get a search warrant for someone’s brain? Should the Fourth Amendment protect our minds in the same way that it protects our houses? Can courts order tests of suspects’ memories to determine whether they are gang members or police informers, or would this violate the Fifth Amendment’s ban on compulsory self-incrimination? Would punishing people for their thoughts rather than for their actions violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment?

Though each justice handles it differently, the general rule is that clerks recuse themselves from working on cases in which parties are represented by firms with whom they are negotiating for employment. The timing and extent of law clerk recruitment has always been fraught with ethical uncertainties. The Code of Conduct for law clerks is not a public document, but the 1998 version -- believed to be still in effect -- is fairly permissive, stopping short of flatly barring clerks from working on cases involving their future employers. A copy of the code is in the recently released Supreme Court files of the late Justice Harry Blackmun. "During the clerkship, a law clerk may seek and obtain employment to commence after the completion of the clerkship," the 1998 code states, adding that "if any law firm, lawyer or entity with whom a law clerk ... is seeking or has obtained future employment appears in any matter pending before the appointing justice, the law clerk should bring this fact to the attention of the appointing justice." But after that notification, the code states, the extent to which the law clerk may work on such a case "should be determined by the appointing justice."

While it is hardly surprising to find the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship on Mr. Frederick’s side, it is the array of briefs from organizations that litigate and speak on behalf of the religious right that has lifted Morse v. Frederick out of the realm of the ordinary. The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute, which has participated in many religion cases before the court; and Liberty Legal Institute, a nonprofit law firm “dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights and religious freedom.” The institute, based in Plano, Tex., told the justices in its brief that it was “gravely concerned that the religious freedom of students in public schools will be damaged” if the court rules for the school board.

Bush indicated a fierce commitment to making sure that Rove and his aides do not testify in public, laying down a clear line beyond which he said Congress should not go. Although past administrations have allowed White House aides to testify before Congress -- and Bush himself permitted his then-homeland security adviser Tom Ridge to testify -- Bush said he is worried about setting "precedents that would make it difficult for somebody to walk into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' "

The president cast the offer [to allow his aides to give private interviews but not sworn testimony] as virtually unprecedented and a reasonable way for Congress to get all the information it needs about the matter. "If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

Executive privilege protects confidential deliberations within the executive branch in some circumstances, even in the face of a subpoena from the courts or from Congress. It is meant to ensure that the president receives candid advice from aides, without fear that they will be hauled before Congress or a grand jury to explain themselves.

[Covering the beat provides] just a wonderful flow of fascinating decisions year in and year out. I’ve never had a dull year there, Brian. You know, in somewhere around February or March, I think, oh this next term just is going to be dull, not going to be anything of real interest. And by the time you get into November, all over again you’ve got good stuff. And it’s going to be a big year.
. . .

LAMB: Is [Scalia] open to you if you call him and go see him?

DENNISTON: I don’t make any effort to see Justice Scalia because I learned early on that he’s very selective in what he does and in his relations with the press. And so I just — and I had the sense — perhaps incorrectly — but I had the sense that there wouldn’t be much value in going out to spend time with him because he doesn’t trust the press very much. And so I would prefer to spend my time with people who think people in the press corps are OK sort of folks.

. . .

The first year [Souter] was there I thought, ”Well, why don’t — to get acquainted with him I’ll invite him to go with me as my guest to the White House Correspondence Association, which is a big social function that makes the press feel good about itself because it feels intimate with official Washington. But he declined and said, ”You know what, I’m so new. I still haven’t figured out what kind of a relationship I want to have with the press.” So I waited about five years. And I asked him again. And he said, ”Well, I’m still trying to figure out what kind of a relationship I want to have with the media.”

. . .

LAMB: . . . Can you get an answer to questions you might have once you look at an opinion? Can you call anybody and say, ”What do you mean by this?” Or do you just have to take it exactly as it’s stated in the opinion?

DENNISTON: Well it doesn’t do any good to call somebody and ask them about it because they won’t respond. Each of them takes the view that when the decision is issued that speaks for the decision. And most of the time, Brian, I’ll tell you it is not hard to figure out. ? The court writes with great clarity. . . . The opinions are quite brief comparatively speaking except, you know, a big case like one of the war on terrorism cases tends to get to be very long. But they do speak clearly. And if you’ve — if you’ve done your homework as a serious legal journalist always should do it isn’t hard to figure out what they did on it.

. . .

LAMB: How many reporters now cover the court regularly, daily?

DENNISTON: Daily? Probably no more than eight to 10 of us. I mean, and I think maybe that’s an exaggeration because when I go down to the press room -- and by the way, we’re still operating in a trailer. The press operation has been in a trailer now for over two years. And we are not likely to get our space back in the court house for another year. So we’re somewhat victimized by the slow process of the [courthouse] modernization project itself. But on an average day you walk into the press trailer over there and there will be maybe five of us, five or six of us. A lot of the reporters who cover the court simply come around maybe once or twice to get prepared for the court’s return after recess and are there when the court’s in session but not there the way I am. I’m there at least three days a week, every week, whether the court’s in session or not.

. . .

LAMB: What’s [Roberts] like?

DENNISTON: Well he’s a truly wonderful human being, I mean, as a human being. He’s very friendly. He’s exceedingly smart. He is more conservative than I thought he would be, I mean after a year and a half. Particularly on criminal law issues he’s unbelievably conservative. . . . But he’s very, very engaging. He’s very clever. I mean, he’s verbally, wonderfully clever. He’s — he doesn’t seem to take himself all that seriously at times.

[Supporters of the judge hearing the case] note that Mr. Nichols has offered to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for a sentence of life without parole, but Paul Howard, the Fulton County district attorney, has refused to take the death penalty off the table. “The Nichols case could have been ended millions of dollars ago if the D.A. had been prepared to accept life without parole,” said Emmet J. Bondurant, the departing chairman of the Public Defender Standards Council. “You can’t fault the defense for trying as hard as they can to save a man’s life.”

One of the most acute observers of the Black trial is Tom Bower, author of a Black biography called Outrageous Fortune. Last month, Black sued Bower in Canada for defamation, asking for $11 million in damages. During breaks, the two eye each other warily in the hallway but don't speak. Bower says the Canadian press has started to divide into Black loyalists and detractors. "The Black Team vs. the Vermin and Sluts," he calls them. That's because earlier this week, a reporter overheard Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, snarl at a Canadian TV producer who tried to follow her into an elevator, "You slut. You reporters are all vermin. I'm sick of it. I used to be a reporter and we never doorstepped anyone." The anecdote appeared on deadline in the London Times and was quickly inserted into the day's story in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Bower is the Vermin's eminence grise.

Now, the broad outlines of the pre-convention operations are emerging from records in federal lawsuits that were brought over mass arrests made during the convention, and in greater detail from still-secret reports reviewed by The New York Times. These include a sample of raw intelligence documents and of summary digests of observations from both the field and the department’s cyberintelligence unit.

The jury foreman [in the first trial], Ralph Craft, told the Washington Post after the trial that the prescribed dosages “went beyond the bounds of reason” and would never have been prescribed by a “legitimate doctor.” Dr. Hurwitz’s defense — that he genuinely believed his patients needed the medicine and didn’t realize he was being duped by drug addicts and dealers — didn’t work, in no small part because the judge told the jury it didn’t matter if he had acted in “good faith.”

Generally speaking, in situations where law firms face judgments, how financial penalties are paid depends partly on what insurance covers. Insurance may not pay when acts of wrongdoing are involved; also, the government sometimes doesn't agree to let a firm use insurance to fund penalties, which was the case with KPMG. Innocent individual partners often don't face personal liability; rather, the assets of the firm are at stake, which can include, for example, accounts receivable, according to attorneys who defend and advise law firms.

“If somebody is floating in and out of the court because they have nine jobs to do, and they’re there that day when the big decision comes down, and they say ‘the Supreme Court held,’ they may very well get it wrong,” Breyer said.