After a jury convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Tuesday of obstructing justice and lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald publicly lamented that "[t]he results" of his CIA leak investigation "are sad."  They certainly are, but not for the reasons the Special Prosecutor believes.

Basking in the glory of his conviction of Vice President Richard Cheney's former right-hand man, Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser -- no doubt the highest of high ranking government officials -- the Special Prosecutor claimed moral superiority.  "It's sad we had a situation where a high-level official, a person who worked in the Office of the Vice President, obstructed justice and lied under oath," Fitzgerald said.  "We wish that it had not happened, but it did."

However, as two of the jurors who sat in judgment of Libby pointed out, maybe the Special Prosecutor should have spent a little -- actually, a lot -- more time during the past three plus years considering whether charges against Libby should have been brought at all.  After all, there was no moral high ground for Fitzgerald to claim.

First came the comments of Juror Denis Collins, the jury's self-appointed spokesman.  In the immediate aftermath of the guilty verdict, Collins emerged from the federal courthouse and explained the decision to reporters. 

"We're not saying that we didn't think Libby was guilty the things we found him guilty of," Collins said.  "But it seemed like he was ... the fall guy." 

Collins went on to say that, during the deliberations, "it was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here?'  ...  [W]here are these other guys?"  It was, after all, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who had confirmed to both the Justice and State Departments before the Special Prosecutor's investigation even began that he -- not Libby -- was the source of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's name. 

In fact, not only was the "no partisan gunslinger" the primary source for Robert Novak, whose column started the whole witch hunt, but Armitage also had leaked the same supposedly confidential information even earlier to star journalist Bob Woodward.

Wednesday night, another Libby juror confirmed that if Fitzgerald's prosecutorial discretion had been on trial, it would have fared just about as well as Libby had.  In a colloquy with Host Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball," Juror Ann Redington said that she hoped Libby would receive a presidential pardon.  And why? 

Well, Redington explained, "in the big picture, ... it kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated, and [Fitzgerald] got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed." 

Indeed, Matthews made it crystal clear through a follow-up that Redington, and perhaps even the jury as a whole, wished that the Special Prosecutor had concentrated on the "leaking of a CIA agent's name" and left it at that.

What smart jurors they were.  Probably smarter -- and certainly more restrained -- than Fitzgerald.  After all, in spite of the fact that the Special Prosecutor and the presiding judge had kept many details away from the jury, including those about whether Plame was ever actually covert and who else had leaked her name to whom and when, the jurors were able to piece together "the big picture" with only the evidence and witnesses they had been allowed to see and hear.

To their credit, the jurors not only understood their job, but also did their job and only their job.  They carefully and conscientiously determined that the pieces presented in court added up to guilt on Libby's part -- not for leaking any supposed secret name, but for misrepresenting specific conversations, whatever their substance.  As a result, they voted to convict despite their belief that the Special Prosecutor's case against Libby amounted to little more than concentrating on a blurry passerby who inadvertently intruded into the real "big picture."

It's the rap that has always dogged independent counsels and their special prosecutions.  They are appointed to find and prove real "big picture" wrongdoing, and end up doing neither.  In this case, that meant the only prosecution brought by Fitzgerald was against someone who wasn't the original leaker of a CIA operative's name, who may not have been covert.  This, despite the fact that the Special Prosecutor always knew who the real leaker was, and whether the CIA agent's identity was ever really a secret.  Disappointing, to say the least.

After winning his case, Fitzgerald explained, he and his team were "all going back to our day jobs."  What the jury understood is that the Special Prosecutor never should have left his day job.