Court Refuses To Delay Libby Prison Term

A federal appeals court refused on Monday to step in and delay former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence in the CIA leak case.

The unanimous decision is a dramatic setback for Libby's legal case and puts pressure on President Bush, who has been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby faces 2½ years in prison on his conviction of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The former chief of staff to Cheney, he is the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

Libby had hoped that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit would put that sentence on hold because he believed he had a good chance of overturning the conviction on appeal. The court unanimously rejected the request.

The decision is "no surprise," says CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "These sorts of motions almost always lose on appeal and I'm sure even Libby figured it wouldn't end well for him. Now he and his lawyers have to hope that either President Bush issues a pardon or that they can convince the appeals court to reverse Libby's conviction on the merits, for mistakes made at trial."

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has not yet assigned Libby a prison or given him a date to surrender. But last week it designated him as federal inmate No. 28301-016.

Libby's attorneys did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Libby's supporters, who raised millions of dollars for his defense fund, immediately renewed a call for a pardon.

"I hope it puts pressure on the president. He's a man of pronounced loyalties and he should have loyalty to Scooter Libby," said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, a member of Libby's defense fund. "It would be a travesty for him to go off to prison. The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything."

Nobody was charged with leaking Plame's identity but Libby was convicted of lying about his conversations with reporters regarding the outed operative.

Like Libby's trial judge, two of the three judges who ruled against him Monday were Republican nominees.