Quote:
|
I watched a video of Obama on the evening news in which he clearly states that Manning is guilty of breaking the law, so if Obama as C in C is ultimately in charge of the court trying this guy, how can he receive a fair trial?
|
This is an intersting question. The same sort of situation occurred in the criminal trial of Charles Manson: in August, 1974, then President Richard Nixon was asked about Manson and he declared he believed Manson was guilty. A big uproar resulted; the Manson defense team was trying to get the case thrown out due to contamination of the potential jury pool due to Nixon's comments;; members of the congress, on both sides of the aisle condemned the gaffe; the media had a field day and the public was outraged; the president's spokesman, in what I belive was the first use of the phrase "What the President meant to say.." (later to be used quite often by Reagan and both Bush I & Bush II) tried to defuse the situation. The final upshot was the trial judge refused the defense motions. I don't think this will happen here, though: this case is well below the public radar and there is very little interest by the public in the media coverage...