The idea of "priming the pump" for impeachment was suggested in an earlier post by looseheadprop, Priming the Pump. She wrote,
When you are going to bring a case to trial you have two standards to think about:
The first is, do I have a prima facia case? That is, do I have at least one piece of admissable evidence to support each and every element on which I bear the burden of proof?
The second is: Do I have a case that can win before the jury I expect to be before? . . .
Now let's think about the jury that we KNOW will be hearing any impeachment case that might come in the next 2 years. Unlike your average jury trial situation where you may have some ideas about the generic makeup of your jury pool, but no idea until after jury selection about your actual individual jurors; in the case of impeachment, we already know exactly which individuals will be sitting on the jury PLUS we already know (or can find out with minimal research skills) a great deal about what they believe and think and what motivates them. In short, it is not hard to figure out where their "buttons" are.
So, if you want to start a virtual think tank effort to put together an indictment in the form of Articles of Impeachment that can persuade THIS JURY, what would you put in it? What admissible evidence is there? How much of that admissible evidence and how persuasive is it? In what order and through what testimony or exhibits would you introduce it?
This is known as setting your "order of proof." In my firm is done as a written plan.
Next, you want to prime the pump. Unlike a regular jury where it is unethical and illegal to try to influence a juror, in this instance it is entirely proper to do so in a transparent way.
. . . it is entirely lawful and proper for you and as many of your fellow constituents as you can muster, to write to, telephone, email, telegram or in person lobby your elected representative to the US Senate and to express you opinion that that you believe the following acts (whichever ones you choose) violate the following laws (the virtual think tank can be a big help here).
This is exactly what the priming the pump idea was all about. We need a public workspace to create a virtual think tank for this task.
I have decided to start such a workspace, using the "wikispaces" facility.
For Vice President Cheney, I started with Rep. Kucinich's 3 Articles of Impeachment. But these may not be the best or the strongest articles. Just for starters, we need to ask
- What admissible evidence is there?
- How much of that admissible evidence and how persuasive is it?
For President Bush, I'm starting with the Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush, published last year by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
In order to work, this needs to be a group effort. Please drop by and check out our virtual think tank. You can contribute comments in the "Discussion" tab of each page. And if you want to help with the nuts and bolts, please let me know. I'll need to control membership to prevent trolls from taking over, but I am hopeful that we can get some legal minds better than mine to refine these articles.