The jury has concluded deliberations and will announce a verdict in coming minutes. Open thread for discussion and related links.
See also: Conrad Black Trial blog.
Guilty on 4 of 13 counts (corrected):
After 10 days of deliberations, the jury at the fraud trial for Conrad Black has found the former media baron guilty on four of 13 counts in his fraud and racketeering trial, including the serious charge of obstruction of justice.
Black was cleared of the charge of racketeering, but legal expert Paula Todd called the obstruction charge “extraordinary.”
as expected
Let the appeals begin.
The jury has spoken. I can’t help thinking Black et al made mistake choosing trial by jury, rather than judge alone. Correct me if I’m wrong, he did have that option, right?
Anyway, looks like he’s going to jail, after interminable appeals and forfeiture hearings.
The greed of these guys is truly amazing and now they have been hoisted on their own petard. It’s a good day for corporate governance and accountability. I thought the jury did a great job and should be congratulated.
Black is getting off light,… well at least
Lord Poo-Poo Pants is heading off to do some well deserved time in the big house
He could be facing 35 years in jail and $1,000,000 in fines. Sweet.
They could have, at least, found the a**h**e guilty of being a pompous ass and an arrogant twit. But, something is better than nothing.
So, now he’ll appeal using shareholder’s money.
Too bad.
Obstruction of justice and 3 counts of mail fraud????
Sounds like the jury just wanted to punish him for being him, (other than the obstruction charge).
Well, Lewis Libby had his sentence commuted. Why not Conrad?
So much for the supposed “impasse”.
Conrad would have walked away with a slap on the wrist if he had not stabbed them in the eye with his contempt for the ** Do not remove records order**.
When Black personally removed 13 black file boxes to his vehicle and made jestures towards the video camera he motivated some powerful people to teach him a lesson.
That lesson could be seven to twelve years depending on how appeals go.
Terms of ten years or less would be served in a *Club Med* minimum security detention centre.
Terms of 7 to 10 years would amount to 2 to 4 years served in Canada. I suspect he will serve about 4 years in the USA.
Any expert opinion? = TG
Had he been sentenced in Canada, he would be pretty much guaranteed to be paroled after one-sixth of his sentence, being a “non-violent” offender. They’re not that generous in the US.
If Mr. Black did commit fraud on three transactions, why are the board of governors for Hollinger also not on trial? They approved every single transaction. How many members of the board are still sitting on the boards of other companies?
Obstruction of justice I have trouble with. He removed boxes that were returned and of which the government had photocopies of all. No obstruction of justice there, contempt of court most certainly but not the former.
Another Patrick Fitzgerald legal lynching. And what about Tweedy Brown and the former SEC Chair who shoved Black out of the companies he built, looted them and left the shareholders whose shares Black had massively enriched with nothing?
Black took PERSONAL files from storage and returned them a few days later. “Obstruction of Justice”? Fitzgerald thinks he’s “Justice” personified.
Once upon a time I admired the American legal system. After OJ it became apparent to many that there was something deeply wrong and rotten. Recent politcal show trials like Libby and Black confirm it.
Judging from some of the comments here and, especially, on the rabid-dogs comment pages of the Globe and Mal, Black has been convicted for being smar, articulate and successful. How awfully Canadian a response.
It’s hard to beat the Lynch Mob mentality of that whole Court Proceeding from start to finish.
Looks like Conrad is even worse than OJ Simpson who allegedly killed two people and is wandering their holier than thou country a free man.
It’s sickening end to a long and stressful trial and at this time we should feel sympathy for him and his family.
No doubt Chretien will be cheering and all the Librano crowd.
Andrew, the charges are mail fraud because the matter is in Federal court, which requires an interstate aspect. The prosecution has to prove both fraud and the inter-state aspect. Mail fraud is thus essentially the same thing as fraud.
The obstruction conviction is the most serious. No one but Black knows what the boxes contained before he returned them. His “personal” papers included “musings” in which he laid out his plans for each season. How many musings went missing this way? Don’t know, because justice was obstructed.
TG,
Agree that removing the records was a huge mistake by Black.
Also, I am not an expert, but read in the Post that Black is not eligible to serve time in a “Club Fed” facility because he is not an American. He therefore is destined for a standard U.S. federal prison. Which are apparently rough but not as bad as state prisons.
Also serving time in Canada is not an option because Black is not a Canadian.
Patrick B you said it perfectly. Well done.
A black Friday the 13th for Conrad Black et al.
The biggest charge is the obstruction of justice charge.
The racketeering charge was not guilty which carries major time.
Obviously, the jury took a rather dim view of the removal of boxes, regardless of whether or not copies were held by other parties.
Radler’s and others testimony obviously scuppered most of the other charges.
3 counts of mail fraud doesn’t look good.
Of course all of these charges stem from the heady Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia environment. The shot across the bow is that shoddy corporate governance is not to be tolerated.
It will be interesting to see the appeals/sentencing process going forward.
I am sure it won’t happen, but those convicted including Black should sue the “Audit committee” including a former US governor whom “skimmed over” and approved the
Non-compete clause payments.
Jury of his peers?
Not according to most news accounts.
Friday the thirteenth was rubbing salt into wealthy peoples wounds.
Four of 13 charges? I don’t think the prosecution did as well as some would seem to think.
Black, reportedly, has applied to become a Canadian again. Whether he is able to while convicted of a felony is questionable. I think it would need to be a political move, which I suspect is unlikely.
Initially, I believed Mr Black was being railroaded – non-compete clauses are very common. But it looks like Black and the others changed the deal after it was done, took the money out of the payment to Hollinger, and that the buyers never intended to ask for a non-compete from these gentlemen. Indeed, some of them testified they had never even heard of some of the defendents.
If true – Mr Black is a thief, and deserves to pay the price.
Steyn has good commentary here:
http://forums.macleans.ca/advansis/?mod=for&act=dis&eid=52
A short paragraph from the National Post sums it up nicely
“Legal observers repeatedly said that it was unlikely the four co-defendants would be acquitted, in part because they faced so many charges and the success rate of prosecutors in Chicago federal court is 95%.”
So the prosecutions strategy was to throw as much shit at the wall as possible knowing that in chicago, 5 % is going to stick.
I do not understand how the jury could find Black guilty on the removal of boxes unless it can be demonstratably proved that there were relevant documents in them that were removed – and they can’t.
Funny how Patrick Fitzgerald seems to be so concerned about the removal of documents in another country in what should be a corporate governance case, but apparently Sandy Berger can stuff his pants full of documents directly related to US national security and he gets a slap on the wrist.
The Audit Committee members are skimming over the verdicts as we speak.
Ward said “I do not understand how the jury could find Black guilty on the removal of boxes unless it can be demonstratably proved that there were relevant documents in them that were removed – and they can’t.”
I couldn’t agree more. Was there some kind of court order in place instructing him not to move anything?
Well, IMO, if a court said not to remove the boxes, and he removed the boxes, it’s irrelevant as to whether the government had copies of the documents inside, or whether the documents inside were even relevant to the case. The court said don’t remove them, so removing them is in contempt of a court order. Big mistake on his part.
Have to agree wholeheartedly with ward’s last sentence, though.
Boo-f*cking-hoo. Rich a**hole gets his comeuppance. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
“legal expert Paula Todd” ? ROTFLMAO!!!
Jombo,
“I couldn’t agree more. Was there some kind of court order in place instructing him not to move anything?”
uummm, Yes. And Black ignored it.
This disgusting event is a sad sign of the times. No crime was properly articulated let alone committed – simply Federal Government bullying using a class warfare show trial to bolster political ambitions. If Black is guilty then so are every board of directors of every corporation in the free world. Corporate excess can make for pretty subjective hate crimes. If some shareholders won’t look out for their own investments and discipline their boards of directors then you sure as hell don’t want Uncle Sam paying ambitious trial Lawyers to do it by criminalizing activities of corporate management.
The leviathan state just got bigger!
Zorpheous said “Yes (court order in place instructing him not to move anything). And Black ignored it.”
Then he’s guilty.
RE the removal of documents. It was pointed out in the trail that Conrad had not yet received the orders not to remove the boxes. When he was advised that there was a court order telling him not to remove the boxes, he returned them.
Steyn also has a good take on the flimsiness of this charge:
Yes, there was an in-house “document retention policy” that Conrad was clearly flipping the finger at, and yes, there was a court order by a judge in Toronto, though the Ontario Superior Court has declined to take any action in respect of Lord Black’s apparent breach. But in her instructions to the jury Judge Amy was explicit that, under US law, “obstruction of justice” means you have to obstruct an “official proceeding” – ie, not Bloggs Security’s guidelines and procedures. Furthermore, it has to be an “official proceeding” in the United States – an Ontario court order isn’t going to cut it. Patrick Fitzgerald can’t prosecute obstruction of Canadian justice.
This was the most shameless jurisdictional overreach by a government which banged on incessantly about a Toronto judge’s order as if the Northern District of Illinois had annexed Ontario. It hasn’t. And, without that Superior Court order, there’s no there there. Conrad Black should be acquitted of obstruction.
Always comical to see the class envy of losers who think that getting rich or being rich deserves some form of punishment.
Your punishment losers is to be what your are FOREVER.
As for Black I Always felt that the Directors of Hollinger should be the ones in the hot seat!
Blacks behaviour was outlandish but not necessarily illegal. Moot point point now though as he’s become another notch on the gunbelt of Patrick Fitzgerald.
One thing about the mailfraud charges that bugs me is that, the intent of those laws is to protect people and the US treasury form fraudulent communications by post. The way I see it nobody was defrauded through any form of communications except that some people who should have known better did not read the fine print on certain agreements.
Is the mail fraud charge just a legal catchall used to bludgeon targets of ambitious prosecutors?
On the Obstruction charge – What jurisdiction does a US court have over actions on Canadian turf?
It may be hard to have sympathy for the arrogant C.Black and his buds … but I think the criminal prosecution was wrong.
The shareholders money he abused should have been dealt with through civil means.
But of course that would not have provided the showcase for Fitzgerald and the media!
If the guy did 1/2 of what he is accused of in China, we would be reading Tuesday that he was executed on Monday. End of story.
Steyn raises some interesting points on his Macleans blog re obstruction of justice.
http://forums.macleans.ca/advansis/?mod=for&act=dip&pid=60906&tid=60906&eid=52&so=1&ps=30&sb=1
“So to convict on this charge you have to find that Black was seeking to obstruct at least one of three proceedings: a) the SEC investigation; b) the grand jury’s criminal investigation; c) or any forthcoming case before the US District Court in Chicago (the US Attorney’s investigation alone does not qualify as an “official proceeding”).
Was Conrad seeking to obstruct the SEC investigation? I don’t think a reasonable person could conclude so. Every document in the boxes the SEC already had. Could he have been seeking to obstruct a criminal case that had not yet begun? In theory, possible. But that’s not exactly a ringing proof of criminal intent – and furthermore he has what most of us would regard as an entirely plausible explanation: He’d been served with an eviction order from his Toronto office so he had to get his stuff out anyway.”
…”Still, here’s the thing: For this charge to stick, all 12 jurors have to agree Black was seeking to obstruct the same “proceeding”. It’s not enough for five jurors to think he was obstructing the SEC investigation and another seven to think he was obstructing a forthcoming criminal trial. That makes it a slightly trickier proposition. Around the court, you’ll hear folks say that, if Black walks on the non-competes, convicting him on obstruction is an easy way for the jury to demonstrate how sophisticated they are. Other legal experts tell me a basic equity issue comes into play: if he’s found not guilty on the non-competes, you can’t expose him to 20 years in jail for “obstructing” a proceeding in which there’s no underlying crime. Yes, that’s more or less what happened to Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart, but in both cases each was specifically prosecuted for the peripheral offence alone.
That sounds right to me. This was the most shameless jurisdictional overreach by a government which banged on incessantly about a Toronto judge’s order as if the Northern District of Illinois had annexed Ontario. It hasn’t. And, without that Superior Court order, there’s no there there. Conrad Black should be acquitted of obstruction.”
So if Steyn is correct in his apprehension of the facts, Conrad Black may have some legs on which to appeal the obstruction charge.
“legal expert Paula Todd” sounds very much like “legal expert Nancy Grace.”
Good post OMMAG. Let’s hope that A**hole Fitzgerald, Lynch Mob leader gets his day.
This cant’s be it, that’s all she wrote for Conrad Black. Someone from our higher echelons of power will surly not stay silent on this one.
It’s sickening that we have people who are cheering this outcome, shows what’s out there and the attitudes toward those who do well or who, like Black, were born to wealth.
He was tried in the worst possible venue by a Jury not of his peers. I’d venture the Jurors couldn’t understand half what went down in that case.
Here we have a Canadian born Icon whose life has just about ended if he gets the prison term the prosecutors are lusting after and people are cheering.
Don’t know about anyone else but I feel totally sickened.
It seems that to the agressive prosecuter in the states, attempting a defence is obstruction of justice.
In the USA “obstruction of justice” is a codeword for “did not immediately confess to all crimes”.
It seems to be fairly easy to whip up a jury nowadays into a frenzy of envy and suspicion. I figured that out the day I heard one of the Martha Stewart jurors explain that it was a “victory for little people”.
Not that I like what Black did, but this is between Black and his shareholders and not something into which a crusading demagogue should stick his nose.
If government defines in great detail the way companies should be run, what compensation is just and fair, what profits are fair, what accounting systems should be used, how records should be kept, and so on, then what you have is a fascist state. The descent into tyranny is of course accompanied by loud cheering and clapping from the peanut gallery. The people don’t just tolerate their enslavement but they actually demand it, one pathetic victim at a time.
Boy, some of guys make it sound like Lord Black didn’t have any sort of Defence Lawyers or that they failed to make any sort of arguements. Maybe you guys should run over to Lord Black’s Lawyers and explain it to them how they screwed up defending him.
Why all the indignation here? People get convicted of things all the time, rightly or wrongly, and almost none of them have Black’s resources to mount a successful appeal. I feel more sympathy for the people who do the real hard time for violent crimes they didn’t commit, or the kid who gets ten years for walking a paper bag across the street. Black won’t see a day of prison for several years, if at all. And if he’s anything like Martha Stewart, his net worth will actually go up.
Now that this thing is over, I can finally uncork my own opinions. Here’s the first one: if one of the goals of the United States Justice Department was to put us little Canadians in the right frame of mind for the upcoming Arctic sovereignty dispute, they’ve done a rather fine job through effectively extending the Northern District of Illinois’s purview into a foreign jurisdiction – with, of course, the assistance of the jury.
It says loads about the Americans, the North-West Passage, and what the Government of Canada should be doing by 2008 with respect to the above two.
One more comment: I would like to publicly thank Kate for linking to my own blog in SDA. Not only did she do so at the top of this thread, but also in mid-March when the trial was just beginning.
Thanks, Kate.
– Daniel M. Ryan
“Don’t know about anyone else but I feel totally sickened.
Posted by: Liz J at July 13, 2007 2:17 PM”
I’m right with you on that sentiment, Liz J; sickened by the whole procedure and sickened by the peanut gallery here and elsewhere cheering it on. I think Black will appeal and he has a good chance of winning on appeal.
Mississauga Matt:
“legal expert Paula Todd” sounds very much like “legal expert Nancy Grace.”
Notwithstanding I find Nancy Grace impossible to watch, she was a district attorney in Georgia.
“Grace worked for nearly a decade in the Atlanta-Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney’s office as Special Prosecutor. Her work focused on felony cases involving serial murder, serial rape, serial child molestation and arson.[9] While Grace won nearly 100 felony cases at trial without any losses,[9], some convictions were later overturned on appeal.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace
BTW, Lord Black had been evicted from the office building from where he removed the boxes. So was he supposed to leave it all for the next tenant?
And I wish you were right, Mr. Ryan, but the only time that Canada’s left, MSM etc. get pissed off at Americans is if a liberal ox is being gored. Do you think the Red Star and the Glib and Pale are going to give a shit about Lord Black being charged and convicted by the U.S. for something he did in Canada? They’d only get worried if it were a Canadian jihadist being so charged and convicted.
Re the charge of obstruction from a CBC report:
“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had also sent Black’s legal team a letter indicating that the SEC was interested in Hollinger documents for an investigation.
The lawyers had received the letter the day before Black had moved the documents. But those lawyers testified Thursday that they never told Black about the SEC letter. Black’s secretary, Joan Maida, also said she knew nothing about any SEC probe.”
So it is testified to in court, by lawyers, that Black was not aware of any orders to not remove the boxes.
How is justice obstructed? And how can the jury convict given the above?
Remember folks, they had a bunch of trumped up charges against Martha Stewart and in the end all they could muster was “she lied’.
They’re such goddamned puritans in the US of A Justice system, thou shall not tell a lie yet the prosecution in the Black case made all kinds of fabrications, called charges, turned out to be false. Not enough were false in the eyes of the jury who probably really have no clue about the complications of all these charges, how could they?
It’s a poor way to try a person,when the stakes are so high. Jury trials should not be used in such complicated cases as this one, ordinary people do not understand such business and it has international scope as well.
Let’s hope the judge has a few scruples. There should be an appeal process for a man whose life will be over if he’s given full brunt of the US law.
If not I for one will ditto the Carolyn Parrish infamous comment, though directed only at the US Justice system, it’s an ass.
andycanuck,
It cuts both ways. Do you really think that there would be this level of indignation on the comment board here if Black had been a lefty mogul and all of the pertinent facts around the case were identical? It would have been “Hang him high!”
Claiming ignorance of a court order is not and never has been a defense. Also those statements as called self-serving.
Daniel M. Ryan: Your paranoia may need treatment.
Mark
Ottawa
I think the gloating comments on this thread are basic socialist Canadian envy and rejection of wealth. Socialist Canadians reject the results of hard work, entrepreneurship and ‘smarts’ – all shown by Black; they prefer gov’t handouts.
I’m not familiar enough with the trial or evidence, but I suspect Chretien’s gang behind it. Chretien, a total narcissist, is an arch enemy of Black and is, himself, a master thief of the Canadian taxpayer, and businesses. His connections, his vindictiveness – I suspect Chretien’s hand in this whole affair.
Hopefully, Black will win on appeal. But, how do we, the Canadian taxpayer, get our money back from Chretien? There’s no court that would help us with that!