Opinion: Maybe he should get a wig, too

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In England, judges tend to mouth off more than their American counterparts, especially when it comes time to impose a sentence. It’s not much of a trial if the sentencing judge doesn’t deliver a lecture in which he calls the convicted defendant “wicked.” Only the other day the Daily Express quoted Mr. Justice Butterfield (a real person, not a character from “Rumpole of the Bailey”) using the W word in sentencing seven convicted terrorists.

Is U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who sentenced Scooter Libby to 30 months in prison, a closet Anglophile? You have to wonder in light of Walton’s tongue-wagging over a brief filed on Libby’s behalf by a dozen legal scholars. With heavy sarcasm of the high school variety, the judge responded by saluting their “impressive show of public service” before suggesting that they offer their services on a similar basis to less well-connected defendants:

‘The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step up to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions.’ Burn!

Or maybe he doesn’t want top legal talent to “step up to the plate” in lower-profile cases after all. In spurning the legal luminaries’ suggestion that he allow Libby to remain free during an appeal, Mr. Justice Walton cracked that their brief was ‘not something I would expect from a first-year law student.” Double burn!

At least he didn’t call them wicked.