The media reports, webbed overnight and this morning, on the Conrad Black trial are unusually plentiful - unusually but unsurprisingly, given the dropped charge:
1. From the New York Times, an abridged AP report on yesterday's news, which not only includes the dropped money-laundering charge, but also a recap of yesterday's testimony. An briefer abridgement of the same report is available from the Winnipeg Sun.
2. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune has a one-paragraph summary, entitled "Prosecution rests in Black's fraud trial," as item #4 in its business-briefs wrapup.
3. The Dublin Independent has webbed the report on yesterday's trial events by James Bone of the Times. It starts off by noting that the chances of Conrad Black testifying are close to zero.
4. From Angus Reid, the results of a poll, of Canadians, on the trial. Four questions and the answers are highlighted on the summary page: "Conrad Black is being unfairly targeted by U.S. prosecutors because he is not American - 10% [agree]"; "Conrad Black will get a fair trial in the United States - 42% [agree]"; "The U.S. justice system has reasonably punished the corporate executives who have broken the law in recent years - 37% [agree]"; "I would feel sorry for Conrad Black if he is convicted - 9% [agree]." The other responses, and an interpretation, are on the summary page itself.
5. A report by the Chicago Tribune's Ameet Sachdev and Susan Chandler is entitled: "Did prosecutors do enough?" It has the assessments of two trial experts, Hugh Totten and Steve Skurka, on these pivotal parts of the prosecution's case: David Radler's testimony, Paul Healy's, and James Thompson's. According to the "Observers' Take," former Gov. Thompson was actually the worst witness, for the prosecution, of the three.
6. The Vancouver Sun has webbed a CP summary that also includes the names of the two witnesses expected to be called by Conrad Black's defense team, Joan Maida and Kenneth Whyte.
7. Peter Worthington interprets the above-mentioned Angus Reid poll in his latest column, webbed by the Toronto Sun, which begins with the acknowledgement that "Angus Reid pollsters have discovered that the media are more interested than the public in the Conrad Black trial in Chicago." He points to an ostensible oddity in the poll's findings: "while people in the 18-34 age group pay the least attention to the trial (82%), this group is also the least sure, or is uncertain, about whether he can get a fair trial (60%). " He ends his latest by acknowledging that he was too critical of the jury right after the trial started.
8. The Vancouver Sun has also webbed a report by Mary Vallis, which begins with the "abruptly" dropped charge. "Edward Genson, a defence attorney representing Black, quipped, 'Okay, I guess I can go,' as the charge was dropped. The 16-member jury was not present and attorneys in the case were discussing issues related to the trial, including upcoming evidence." Also in her report is the mention that the prosecution ended its case with copies of Mr. Black's spending receipts, and a copy of an Jan. 17, 2003 E-mail to Peter Atkinson in which he referred "to a public company as a 'vehicle for extracting money, as in the non-competes.'" It ends with a note that a B.C. lawyer, who Eddie Greenspan had intended to call as an expert witness, "could... end up testifying about his relationship with Radler at the criminal trial."
9. The Vancouver Province has a report that focuses in on that expert witness, B.C. lawyer Kevin Woodall, because "Conrad Black's defence team wants [him] to testify at Black's fraud trial in Chicago on the issue of whether David Radler is a truthful witness." One of Mr. Black's counsels has asked the B.C. Supreme Court to declare solicitor-client privilege between Mr. Radler and Csr. Woodall to be waived, on the grounds that Mr. Radler has admitted, in the present trial, to lying on the stand in a 2002 wrongful-dismissal case heard in B.C., and has testified that Csr. Woodall had advised him to say what he said on the stand back in '02. The motion has been challenged by Hollinger International counsel Dan Burnett, on the grounds that Hollinger International has the right to waive privilege, not Mr. Radler himself, as the company represented by Mr. Radler, the "now-defunct Lower Mainland Publishing," was owned by Hollinger Int'l. Csr. Burnett "also said Woodall will sign an affidavit to say Radler wasn't his client in the 2002 trial." The report ends by noting that the hearing will resume Monday.
10. Also from the Province, a mixture of both the Reuters and Bloomberg reports on yesterday's part of the trial. Csr. Skurka is quoted therein as saying, "'The case is going very well for the defence before they've even called the first witness,' Steven Skurka, a criminal-defence lawyer who is attending the trial to write for his blog, www.thecrimesheet.com... [He also] said Radler was the only witness 'who draws Conrad Black into this fraudulent non-compete scheme.'"
11. The Globe and Mail has webbed a report by Paul Waldie, which notes that the now-dropped money-laundering charge "was among the most serious Lord Black faced and it had been added to the indictment with great fanfare by prosecutors, along with racketeering, in December of 2005... When Lord Black and the others were charged, prosecutors alleged all of the non-competition payments should have gone to Hollinger. Shortly after the trial began, prosecutors conceded that the payments to Lord Black and Mr. Radler were legal but they said Lord Black still faced charges for arranging non-competes for defendants Peter Atkinson and John Boultbee.
"The money-laundering charge, which relates to the wiring of Lord Black's non-compete funds, only applied to Lord Black and it related directly to the CanWest deal." It also notes, near the end, that the pivotal prosecution witnesses have had their credibility battered during cross-examination.
12. Another report by Mr. Waldie, also webbed by the Globe, starts off with the same item webbed by the Province: "During a hearing yesterday without the jury, Edward Greenspan, one of Lord Black's lawyers, said he wanted to introduce information from a Canadian lawyer to challenge statements Mr. Radler made while testifying." It discloses, though, that Judge St. Eve agreed with lead prosecutor Eric Sussman's objection that attorney-client privilege would make such testimony inadmissible. She also "added that Mr. Greenspan would have to find evidence that Mr. Radler knew about the Canadian sentencing rules before he signed his plea agreement or before he testified. She said she would revisit the issue if Mr. Greenspan uncovered more information."
13. Channel 4 News in the U.K. has a brief summary of the dropped charge.
14. Janet Whitman of the New York Post also focuses on the dropped money-laundering charge in her latest report. It notes that Judge St. Eve agreed "immediately" to the dropping of the charge, but it also contains this quote about the rest of them: "Prosecutors have 'more than enough [other] charges to accomplish their goal if the jury buys [their] basic story that the defendants, with Black in the lead, conspired to divert . . . non-compete payments that properly belonged to Hollinger International,' said Mark Zauderer, a trial lawyer in New York specializing in white-collar crime cases."
15. The Toronto Star's Rick Westhead's report recaps the entire case so far, after noting that, "[i]n a somewhat surprising twist after 11 weeks of prosecution witnesses, defence lawyers said yesterday that they would take just a week or two to present their evidence before the jury could begin deliberations."
16. A much longer and more detailed report by Ms. Vallis has been webbed by the National Post. It notes on the top of page 2 that, even if he's acquitted of all charges that remain, Mr. Black's legal troubles are not yet over: the obstruction-of-justice "charge is also directly relevant to investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury, as well as the federal court proceedings in Chicago." The entire case so far is summed up from the second half of page 2 to the final (fourth) page.
17. The Daily Mail's report notes that Conrad Black will definitely not testify in his own defense. Nor will Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee.
18. The Guardian's latest report was not written by the regular reporter on the beat, Andrew Clark, but by Mark Sweney. It's entitled "Black prosecutors drop a charge."
19. BBC News is back on the beat, with a report entitled "Lord Black prosecutors rest case." It touches upon all the major developments in yesterday's part of the trial.
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In the opening of the Mar. 31st entry in "The Crime Sheet," Csr. Skurka describes the dropped charge as "a hollow victory... [It] was withdrawn without a whisper of a reason today from the attorneys for the US government. The silence was out of character with the robust nature of the prosecution. Their case was ending with a whimper rather than a bang...." He sees far greater significance in the eight days allotted to the entire slate of defense witnesses.
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