Defense Closing Arguments, Day 3

According to a Canadian Press report from 680 News, the closing statement for Peter Atkinson has started. Mr. Atkinson's counsel, Michael Schachter "says Atkinson never deceived or defrauded anyone - and the prosecution's own witnesses prove it." Instead, Csr. Schacter argued, the evidence showed that Mr. Atkinson was the guy who tried to put a stop to any irregularities. In addition to the above, an Associated Press report, webbed by WANDTV.com, contains one of Gus Newman's pithy comments, made earlier today: he called David Radler " a 'charade.'" The rest of this report also touches upon the content of the above CP report.

The Bloomberg report, written by Joe Schneider and Bob Van Voris, concentrates upon Csr. Schachter's words. It quotes Csr Schachter as saying, "'This is a criminal case, this isn't a game...' The prosecutors' objective 'is to win regardless of the facts,' he said.... Reaching down to the floor, Schachter twice picked up an armful of binders containing transcripts of Radler's eight days of testimony and slammed them down on a table between him and the jury." The rest of the report recounts a moment from Csr. Newman's closing argument, in which he said that James Thompson's "'silence was deafening'" when the chair of the Audit Committee.

[An update of the same report adds this excerpt from Csr. Schachter: "Atkinson was paid as a bonus for 'quarterbacking the biggest deal in Hollinger history' and the biggest in Canada that year, he told jurors." He also said that Mr. Atkinson had signed a non-compete agreement at Mr. Radler's request, and "only after the company's outside lawyers approved it."]

Reuters' report, written by Andrew Stern, also concentrates upon the closing address for Peter Atkinson. It begins with: "A lawyer for one of Conrad Black's three co-defendants urged jurors on Thursday not to lump the men together when they decide if the four stole millions of dollars from the former media baron's company." It discloses that the reference to the witnesses above was nestled in that context. "'You need to think about this as four separate trials.'"

Further details came from a BNN interview with Amanda Lang, aired at 1:54 PM ET. According to Ms. Lang, Csr. Schachter delivered a “spirited” argument. He said that the prosecution has to show intent, whcih they have not. Ms. Lang described his delivery as quite “stirring” when he said that there was no evidence against his client at all. He had yelled the “game” remark quoted above, including the part that the prosecution will do anything to win.

Csr. Schachter isn't concentrating on the testimony of Mr. Radler; he confined himself to saying that nothing Mr. Radler had testified to implicated his client. He did attack prosecution witnesses Darren Sukonick and the Audit Committee members, claiming that all of them had lied on the stand. Mr. Atkinson, according to Csr. Schacter, did exactly what an innocent man would have done back in '02 and '03. Ms. Lang described the prosecution as looking a little “green around the gills” during his address.

An updated version of the above report, as webbed by CBC News, contains a more complete version of the "game" excerpt mentioned above: "'[Prosecutor Jeff] Cramer stood before you [during opening arguments] and told you something there was no evidence of,' he said." Csr. Scachter then gave this reason for that accuation: "It's to confuse you. It's to make you think Peter was involved in something he had nothing to do with... It's to win regardless of the facts.'" The report also describes this reaction from the jury: "The increasingly weary jury perked up when Schachter began his closing arguments, appeared captivated by the intense former New York prosecutor who famously landed a conviction against home fashion diva Martha Stewart...."

Mary Vallis has some additional details in her report, webbed by the National Post. Noting that " Mr. Atkinson... faces charges of mail and wire fraud and filing false tax returns," it relates that Csr. Schachter said that Mr. Atkinson characterized the non-compete payment as a kind of bonus because none of the proceeds had come from what was due Hollinger International; all of the $2 million had come from the $80 million allocated for the overall non-compete payment from CanWest. (The prosecutors have already acknowledged that Mr. Black's share was legitimate.) More specifically, the funds had come from Mr. Radler's allocation: "'It's [money] coming out of Radler's pocket ...never a dime from Hollinger International,' Mr. Schacter said." He also said that the non-compete agreement with Mr. Atkinson was requested by CanWest. "Mr. Schachter suggested it was odd the government did not call any CanWest executives as witnesses to support the allegation when they had called several buyers in other transactions to testify they did not request non-compete agreements with the men on trial."

WQAD.com has webbed an AP summary report on today's closing arguments. A more detailed version has been webbed by the Houston Chronicle, starts with a recounting of Csr. Newman's testimony, including his exhortation to the jury asking them to question the motives of Mr. Radler. The latter half has highlights from Csr. Schachter's closing argument.

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Ms. Vallis has a side report from the trial, posted in the Financial Post's "Black Board," which shows that Eddie Greenspan's Canadianisms have proven to be contagious. Another written scene-shot from Ms. Vallis describes Csr. Newman getting a bit bogged down at the end of his own closing address.

Mark Steyn has piggybacked a comment upon Csr. Schachter's closing address by casting doubt on the ostensibly excellent conviction rate of Patrick J. Fitzgerald's office.

(Lest you think that this is a mere complaint, you may be interested to know that a retired professor of sociology, Jack D. Douglas, has made a career out of looking beyond supposedly hard statistics on human behaviour for the ambiguity within. One of the themes in his work has been the "problematic" element in social-science statistics. If you're interested, he was a young sociologist at the time of the Vietnam War, and he did cut his teeth on body-count-related figures.)

An interesting factoid is in Douglas Bell's latest entry in the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, which explains why there's an otherwise surprising amount of favourable coverage for Conrad Black: Counselor and United States Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald sent a former reporter to jail some time ago, for keeping her mouth shut about a source. The entry itself focuses upon the recent prosecutorial hostility to a few Canadian reporters.