Radler and the rest - Thursday

According to a CP report on the opening part of today's installment of the trial, as webbed by 680 News, Judge St. Eve has yet to rule on the defense motions to put specific restrictions on the testimony of Paul Healy and the prosecution's next witness, Jonathan Rosenberg. Csr. Rosenberg was a counsel for the Hollinger International Special Committee of the Board of Directors. As of the time of the writing of the CP report, David Radler has yet to testify.

Paul Waldie's latest report, webbed by the Globe and Mail, details what he has testified to while in his final stretch on the stand. It starts with: "David Radler spent his last hours on the witness stand at the Conrad Black trial this morning insisting that he was telling the truth." This, he stated while under the quite anticipated redirect examination of him. "'I made a decision that I was going to be totally truthful,' Mr. Radler told prosecutor Eric Sussman after acknowledging that he had lied in the past." The bulk of Mr. Waldie' report, though, focuses upon the final moments of Mr. Radler's cross-examination by Ron Safer. Csr. Safer tried, like all the other defense counsels who cross-examined him, to get Mr. Radler to admit that he was either lying or singing the prosecution's tune, if not both; he didn't. Near its end, the report also mentions that Judge St. Eve has yet to rule on the defense motion to prevent Paul Healy from passing along this statement he heard while "Mr. Healy sat next to Mr. Atkinson during the 2002 annual meeting. As Lord Black spoke, Mr. Atkinson allegedly turned to Mr. Healy and said, 'He's lying.'"

CP has another report out, credited to trial regular Romina Maurino and webbed by the Toronto Star. It begins by relaying an estimate by Csr. Safer, made during his cross-examination of Mr. Radler: "Ron Safer, a lawyer for co-defendant Mark Kipnis, says Rader initially faced a jail sentence of 57 to 71 months under general guidelines in the United States if he pleaded guilty." After a continued grilling, Mr. Radler finally admitted that the only way he could have gotten 29 months under current guidelines was to agree to testify in exchange for the plea bargain. It has yet to be presented to Judge St. Eve. ""I have to say yes," he eventually [conceded to Csr. Safer's statement of it, taking the form of a question,] in a low voice." It also discloses that the jury was ususually attentive to this exchange, which ended with Mr. Radler's admission.

In an interview broadcasted at 1:55 PM on BNN, Mr. Waldie reported that Mr. Radler was finished just before lunch. He was smiling as he left the courthouse, and seemed "confident, or relieved." When he was asked by Eric Sussman how he behaved when he lied, he replied, "I pleaded guilty." When asked why he plea-bargained, he said, "I pled guilty because I am guilty. That's the way it is." Mr. Waldie concluded that the prosecution did a good job as presenting Mr. Radler as consistent during redirect, but the defense had been good at whittling away his testimony. The important question - whether or not his credibility was impugned in the minds of the jury - has no real answer as of yet.

The Reuters report, by Andrew Stern with writing by Michael Conlon, has additional detail on Mr. Radler's final testimony. Csr. Sussman walked Mr. Radler through his understanding of the plea agreement, which the report discloses; the first question quoted in it is: "'What is your understanding of how you could jeopardize your plea agreement?' Sussman asked the 64-year-old Radler." He response said that he'd break it "'by not telling the truth.'" The walk-through ended with Mr. Radler answering, after admitting that he had initially lied to the prosecutors, "'The truth came out ... I made a decision that I was going to be totally truthful and I had access to additional information ... documents.'" Page 3 and the following page contains some testimony from Csr. Safer's cross-examination, which ends with Csr. Safer shouting, after Mr. Radler said that his 'story' was the facts, "'The facts you told the special committee?... The facts you told the FBI for 10 months?'" when [Mr. Radler had] admitted [to] lying."

A report by Mary Vallis and Theresa Tedesco, webbed by the Montreal Gazette, quotes both from the final cross-examination and the redirect, in that order. The report mentions that Csr. Sussman "emphasized that if a judge rejects Mr. Radler's plea agreement, he can simply withdraw his guilty plea and ask to go to trial." It also quotes Conrad Black on Mr. Radler's testimony; he said, before he was stopped by Eddie Greenspan, "'I don't think [Mr. Radler] has any credibility... I don't think any jury in the world would convict anybody on the basis of what he said. As a star witness, I repeat my longstanding view that this was never a criminal case, except possibly against him.'" Near its end, it mentions that Judge St. Eve ruled that the next witness, Csr. Rosenberg, "will be allowed to testify that co-defendant Peter Atkinson told the committee that incorrect information was presented to Hollinger shareholders at the company's annual meeting in 2002. But the judge limited Mr. Rosenberg's comments: He will not be allowed to say that Mr. Atkinson was responding to comments that were made by Lord Black."

An update from Ms. Maurino, also webbed by the Gazette, opens with that quote from Conrad Black. At its end is an additional restriction on what the prosecution can ask Csr. Rosenberg during direct examination: "St. Eve said prosecutors can ask [him] about whether wrong information was provided at the meeting, but they cannot address who said it or suggest it was a lie."

Richard Siklos, author of Shades of Black, was interviewed on CBC Newsworld at 4:08 PM. His assessment of Mr. Radler's performance was: Mr. Radler was successful in that the prosecution got some important evidence on the record through him, as well as their theory that Mr. Black initiated the non-compete payments. Mr. Radler was "genuine" on the stand in this sense: his feistiness during the cross-examinations was the real Radler. This case, despite similarities between it and other corporate-fraud cases, may be different than those others because there is room for doubt regarding Mr. Radler's say-so.

There were no "explosive moments" for Mr. Siklos; Mr. Radler's two weeks were "weirdly anticlimactic." In explaining why he assumes that Mr. Black won't take the stand, Mr. Siklos said that it's a document-centric case, which is lulling the jury due to its complexity. The safest course for the defense is to keep Conrad Black, an unknown to the jury, off the stand.

More details on Mr. Radler's testimony is contained in the Bloomberg report, by Andrew Harris and Thom Weidlich, which begins with: "David Radler, chief witness against former Hollinger International Inc. Chairman Conrad Black, testified his plea agreement was contingent on convincing prosecutors that Black or his codefendants stole company money... He told jurors during cross-examination today in federal court in Chicago he presumed the deal would be 'off the table' if he couldn't show other executives were involved in stealing $60 million." Like the other reports, it relates that Mr. Radler continued to say during Csr. Safer's cross-examination that he was relating the facts, but it also contains an interpretation of the golden-egg memo, written by Conrad Black in 2002 and quoted in the report: "'Well, we had come to a realization that the non-competes were now a dead issue,' Radler told jurors. 'There was a lot of shareholder pressure on this issue and you had to be a fool to continue with the noncompetition program.'''

As far as Csr. Rosenberg's testimony is concerned, a third report from Romina Maurino, webbed by CBC News, has details on it so far. His role, according to Ms. Maurino, is to back up "part of the U.S. government's attempts to persuade jurors that Black and three other executives had no approvals for the tens of millions of dollars they pocketed after the sale of company newspapers." He testified that both Mr. Atkinson and Jack Boultbee had said to him that the individual non-compete agreements and payments were disguised bonuses, and (as expected,) he also testified about "a comment Atkinson made during a 2002 Hollinger annual meeting, when - according to Rosenberg, Atkinson said 'that in his view, certain of the information was incorrectly presented.'" An updated version of the same report adds a note that Paul Healy, former veep of investor relations for Hollinger Int'l, will follow Csr. Rosenberg, who will continue testifying Monday.

There are two brief reports summing up the most-covered part of the day: one from Stephen Foley of the Independent, which focuses on what Mr. Black had to say about Mr. Radler (quoted above,) and a short summary from AP and webbed by WQAD.com. A longer one, by Mike Robinson and webbed by the Southern Illinoisan, both sums up Mr. Radler's entire testimony and has additional detail on Csr. Rosenberg's testimony so far, as well as an item on Csr. Rosenberg's role in the Hollinger Int'l scandal. The man himself "investigated the scandal for Hollinger's board of directors after they became suspicious that they may have been hoodwinked by Black." He's "a former prosecutor at federal court in Manhattan, now is in private practice in New York and was one of several lawyers working on behalf of a special committee set up by the board of directors." It also reveals that Mr. Rosenberg's testimony is based upon notes he took while interviewing the defendants.

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The "Black Board" has a vignette of the Black family chowing down on fast food, and being surprisingly comfortable while doing it.

Douglas Bell's own top-story report, in the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, focuses upon the recent profile of Marie-Josée Kravis, calling attention to an attributed snub by Mrs. Kravis inferred from her 15-30-minute attendance at Mrs. Black's birthday party. It ends with: "For all Lord Black’s wounds, self-inflicted or otherwise, that last line might just be the cruellest blow of all."

And, of course, Mark Steyn has a comment of his own about the new witness, pegging him in the latter of two categories: Hollinger insider whose story implodes on cross-examination; and, reputable, hence plausible, outsider. He ends with: "Will [Mr. Healy] buck the trend [by being an insider whose testimony ends up damaging to the defense]? Or will he join the Skimmer [Mr. Steyn's monicker for James R. Thompson] and the Liar [David Radler] as yet another star turn who flopped big time?"