1. CBC News has webbed the latest installment of Susan Berger's "From The Inside" column, a wrapup of the weekly events at the trial.
2. The Globe and Mail has webbed an article, without byline, entitled "Trump could testify Monday." It notes that closing arguments have been scheduled for June 18, as a result of a meeting between Judge St. Eve and the lawyers yesterday afternoon. The witness list for the Conrad Black defense team was submitted, but it hasn't been released to the media.
3. An article by Theresa Tedesco of the National Post reveals that Canadian tax authorities are considering laying charges against Mr. Black, David Radler and "and two former Hollinger International Inc. executives [Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee] for possible tax evasion." The reason for this charge being contemplated at this late date is: "Canada" was originally listed as a "victim" in the indictment, based upon what David Radler said as part of his plea-bargain agreement, but "the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois... dropped the allegation last October because there could be 'double jeopardy concerns should Canadian authorities pursue criminal charges.'" It also notes that the "RCMP had begun a preliminary probe but decided not to pursue a formal investigation."
4. The Hamilton Spectator has webbed a special by Terry Cooke, entitled "My conversation with Conrad." Mr. Cooke went down to Chicago to watch the Tuesday installment of the trial, and had a brief talk with Mr. Black, during which he got his copy of The Invincible Quest: the Life of Richard Milhous Nixon signed. Mr. Cooke's impression of the course of the trial itself: "Back in the courtroom, the day's evidence by the prosecution was equal parts contrived drama and a stoking of the fires of upper class envy.... the defence team's cross examination demolished the prosecution's presentation of events, leaving court watchers wondering how the case ever made it to trial in the first place." The article ends, though, with an admonishment from an old Chicago lawyer about snap judgements of the outcome of Chicago criminal trials.
5. The Chicago Tribune's "Midwest Briefs" contains a one-paragraph item entitled "Ex-Hollinger exec requests mistrial."It reviews the attempt by Mark Kipnis to have one declared "because prosecutors misled jurors about the existence of evidence against him."
6. From the Calgary Sun, a brief CP item, also about Mr. Kipnis' motion.
7. Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star has written a report that details one of the prosecution's motions: to add a so-called "'ostrich motion'" to Judge St. Eve's instructions to the jury. This motion is a 'shoulda-known' one; it was originally used for drug cases, but has metastatized into an acceptable instruction for corporate-fraud cases at the criminal level. (Like the 'admissible-hearsay' provision for RICO cases, it's one of the peculiarities of American criminal law nowadays.)
8. An analysis piece by Mary Vallis, webbed by the National Post, argues, with supporting conclusions from legal experts Hugh Totten and Steve Skurka, that the prosecution's case hinges solely upon the credibility of David Radler. It mentions only one other prosecution witness whose testimony corroborated Mr. Radler's: Michael Reed, former CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. The article ends with a note that Judge St. Eve is expected to rule on the defense motions, for dismissals, acquittals, and a mistrial, sometime next week.
----------
A two-fer about the dark side of American justice, both written by Americans and both unrelated to the Conrad Black trial itself:
1. From Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, an exposure of the dark side of Rudy Giuliani, done in typical Rolling Stone style. (Bad language, bad side, badassing, etc.) According to the article, Mr. Giuliani has the typical signs of a 'Man on Horseback': a public image as a secular saint/public hero combined with a normal, if not somewhat checkered, record of conduct; a conscience with a not-unusual accumulation of sins; and, when combined with said image, a resultant streak of latent fanaticism. There are a few sympathetic words for Ron Paul, solely because of his underdog status in the '08 Republican primary.
2. "Slouching Toward a Police State" by Matthew Hart, an article containing two vignettes about two nobodies' brushes with aggressive law enforcement. Despite the riff-raffish character of the two alleged victims, both of whom the author knows personally, Mr. Hart manages to be both clean-worded and more graphic than Mr. Tabbai.
(Disclosure/disguised plug: Both of these articles were linked to from LewRockwell.com, which I've written more than a few articles for. The latter is an LRC original.)
To get back to the trial, as well as to a less exotic worldview, Mark Steyn's latest post in his Maclean's Conrad Black trial blog has a sketch, as well as a sympathetic critique, of the defense strategy so far. An interesting subtext of it is Mr. Steyn's juxtaposing of the seriousness which Conrad Black's defense team is treating the obstruction-of-justice charge, and the relative flimsiness of the evidence for it. (At the time when Mr. Black removed the boxes, the SEC had only sent an advisory letter. According to the testimony under direct examination given by Joan Maida, all relevant documents in those boxes had been copied for the SEC before being packed up. I note parenthetically that the prosecution has resorted to a gremlin-in-the-closed-fridge argument to justify that particular charge.) For Canadians, of which I am one, the climactic paragraph is this one:
[Mr. Black had] already given 100,000 pages of documents to the SEC, including all the ones he removed in the heist. And he didn’t know of their latest demand, as it only arrived three days after he took the boxes. So any suggestion of criminal behaviour rests mainly on an Ontario court order on a matter entirely unrelated to the SEC. As far as I know, Ontario is not yet under the jurisdiction of the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, so even if Black breached a Canadian court order that’s not a matter for the US government to enforce.
No comments:
Post a Comment