The below dispatch was filed on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon, Judge Reggie Walton called the attorneys for the government and the defense in the Libby trial into court. Why? The jury had sent him two requests. The jurors asked if they could cut out early on Friday at 2:00 pm. They also asked for a dictionary. The judge said yes to the Friday escape. He said no to the dictionary, explaining to the jury that if they had any questions about the definition of any word used in the instructions or the evidence they should consult with him, not a dictionary.

The meaning of all this? The jury is plowing ahead. And the jurors seem to be presuming they will not be done on Friday. As the judge said to the lawyers, “I assume they will not have a verdict tomorrow.” But they are not yet stuck. Most of the jurors actually looked happy when they appeared in court. They did not appear frustrated, fed-up or upset. So the bottom-line hunch: they have a plan for reviewing the evidence and rendering a verdict–and there will be no resolution until next week.

Now for the earlier dispatch:

I’m still at the federal district courthouse waiting for the verdict in the obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. But this just in: on Wednesday at 3:45 pm, the jurors sent a note to Judge Reggie Walton. It read in its entirety:

We would like another big Post-it pad. The large one for the easel.

The previous day, the jury had sent a question to the judge regarding Count Three of the indictment (which accuses Scooter Libby of lying to the FBI about statements he made to reporter Matt Cooper about former Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife). But by the time the judge was able to respond to the note on Wednesday morning, the jurors had already resolved the issue. “After further discussion,” the jury foreperson wrote the judge, “we are clear on what we had to do. No further clarification needed. Thank you. We apologize.”

After the matter–or non-matter–was resolved, the question was made public by the court. The jurors had asked, “Is the charge that the statement was made or about the content of the statement itself?” Reporters in the press room subsequently tried to discern precisely what the jurors were asking. It was not clear. Nor was the note a clue that pointed in any direction.

So what do these two notes mean? They suggest the jury is still hard at work, in the weeds, plodding through the details of the case–after six days of deliberation. The eleven jurors–one juror was booted because she came into contact with outside information on the case–are even on to their second easel pad. From that you can draw your own conclusions. I’m not making any guesses.

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