Scooter Libby

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In March 2007, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak scandal. In July 2007, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence, eliminating his 30-month jail sentence but retaining his $250,000 fine and two years of probation.

PollingPoint asked for your views on this controversial decision. Most of you believe that President Bush should not have commuted Scooter Libby's sentence, though you were roughly split on whether Libby’s original sentence was fair or not.

Huge numbers of PollingPoint panelists follow the news regularly, and the Libby trial was no exception. The overwhelming majority of you (90%) told us that you followed Scooter Libby’s trial closely. Nearly half of you (45%) indicated that you followed the trial very closely, while, not surprisingly, very few of you did not follow the trial at all (1%).

How closely have you been following the news about the recently completed trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former vice presidential aide?

We asked you whether you think Scooter Libby is guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators in the 2003 probe into the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. On the whole, a majority of you believe that he is guilty (68%), while 23% of you think he is not. A small portion of you are not sure in the matter (9%). Your party identification (i.e., whether you are a Republican or a Democrat) appears to play a strong role in your view of Libby's guilt or innocence. 95% of Democrats and 74% of Independents believe that Scooter Libby is guilty. In comparison, only 26% of Republicans think that Libby is guilty.

In March 2007, Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators in the 2003 investigation of the Valerie Plame case. Do you think he was guilty of these crimes?

We also asked you whether you thought Scooter Libby’s original punishment of a 30-month jail term, 2 years of probation, and $250,000 fine was too harsh. You were split roughly in thirds on this question – 34% of you think that his original sentence is too harsh, while 29% think that it wasn't harsh enough and 38% thought it was about right.

Libby had been sentenced to 30 months in prison, 2 years probation, and fined $250,000. Do you think this punishment was...

Race seems to strongly influence how you evaluate Libby's original sentence. About a third of whites (34%) believe that Scooter Libby's original punishment was too harsh (compared to 38% of whites who think that his sentence was about right and 29% who think it was not harsh enough). The plurality of blacks, however, thought that Libby’s sentence was about right (46%).

Lastly, we wanted to know whether you think President Bush was right to commute Libby's 30-month prison sentence. The clear majority of you say no. Overall, 66% of you disagreed with the decision to commute Libby’s sentence while only 34% of you agreed with it.

Interestingly, about twice as many married people (41%) report that they thought the President was right to commute Libby's sentence, compared to only 22% of our single respondents. Conversely, around 60% of our married panelists disagreed with the decision to commute Libby's sentence compared to almost 80% of single panelists. Also significant is our finding that more men (38%) than women (28%) indicated that they agreed with Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.

Do you agree or disagree with President Bush's decision to commute Libby's 30 month prison sentence?

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