Media Roundup: Predictions and Briefings

The media reports, webbed yesterday and today, mostly focus upon the fate of Conrad Black:

1. From the Financial Post, veteran reporter Diane Francis gives her call on the chances of Mr. Black going to jail: "very likely." The reason, according to Ms. Francis: Judge St. Eve. "This judge is a tough young woman with a raft of experience who has run this trial and her courtroom like a drill sergeant." Drawing on her own background as a Chicagoite born and raised. Ms. Francis claims that the jury has been annoyed by the grilling of David Radler, and that Conrad Black has managed to tick them off by his unconscious elitism. [She did make this point at the trial's outset.]

2. Veering towards the other side is Susan Chandler of the Chicago Tribune, who speculates on the consequence of Conrad Black being acquitted. It begins with: "It's the worst nightmare for executives at Sun-Times Media Group Inc.: Conrad Black, the company's former chief executive, is acquitted of criminal charges and regains his position as the company's controlling shareholder." Soon after, law professor Peter Henning from Wayne State University, who has been following the trial, is quoted as saying that Sun-Times Media Group "is [still?] a mess from a corporate governance point of view... If he is found not guilty, it will be an even bigger mess.'" It also contains an interesting statistic about white-collar crime cases: "The conviction rate for all federal prosecutions hovers around 95 percent, but drops to the 70 percent to 80 percent range in white-collar cases, estimates Samuel Buell, former prosecutor in the Enron case and now a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis." Other experts are quoted as the article reviews the legal hurdles Mr. Black will face even if he's acquitted of all charges.

3. The Ottawa Citizen has webbed an answer to a reader's question by Theresa Tedesco, about why the defense had more challenges to potential jurors than the prosecution in the trial.

4. From Andrew Stern of Reuters, a report which notes that the inclusion of the ostrich instruction gives the prosecutions two possible lines of argument: "that he conceived and led a scheme to bilk millions from his company, or that he deliberately avoided knowing about it while filling his pockets." According to the experts quoted in the report, though, that extra option doesn't necessarily make it a cakewalk for the prosecution. (This is the only report I've read that describes Conrad Black as a "globe-trotting bon vivant." With the exception of the globe-trotting part, this phrase describes his late brother Monte.)

5. Romina Maurino has writen her usual what-to-expect Sunday report, as webbed by Canoe Money. It focuses upon what the closing arguments will be like. The prosecution's is going to focus on their "best evidence and weave together a story that must convince the Chicago jury beyond any reasonable doubt that Black, and former Hollinger International executives Peter Atkinson, Mark Kipnis and Jack Boultbee, deserve to go to jail for the rest of their lives." The most likely evidence to be worked in would be the testimony of the buyers of Hollinger Properties, who testified that they did not request any non-compete payments, and the most likely use of the ostrich instruction is to debunk the defense's theory that David Radler acted alone. The defense, on the other hand, is likely to focus upon the lack of documentary corroboration of the testimony of the prosecution's star witness, along with the theme that he's a serial liar, and the impugned testimony of the audit committee.

6. From Canada East, an itemization of what stories to watch for next week from the Canadian Press, in which the beginning of the closing arguments is noted under Monday.

7. James Bone of the Times Online has weighed in with a forecast of his own, entitled "'Ostrich’ ruling by judge may tilt jury against Lord Black." He quotes one expert who is sure that Mr. Black will get at least a few years' worth of time out of the trial, and another who believes that Conrad Black will be found guilty on some charges. At the end of his report, he summarizes the entire list of charges Mr. Black faces.

8. The trial is mentioned in a feature, webbed by The Independent, about how Britain's august gossip magazine, The Tatler, is bending with more meritocratic times. It was this magazine in which Conrad Black chose to make his case.

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Mark Steyn has written the third installment of series "on how the four defendants stand as they begin closing arguments:" this latest entry in the Maclean's Conrad Black trial blog covers Jack Boultbee. He notes an interesting fact: back in November of '03, it was Mr. Boultbee who told Breeden et al. to shove off. Mr. Steyn concludes that there's little evidence against Mr. Boultbee, even if he's more closely tied to Conrad Black than Mr. Atkinson is.

(He also comes close to saying that Patrick J. Fitzgerald has come close to confusing NAFTA with die Zollverein, the German customs union that proved to be the prelude to das Kaiserreichvereinheitlichung. With, of course, a blood Emperor at its top.

(I can joke about this because Canada's Head of State is HM Queen Elizabeth II, which makes Canada all-but-unswallowable by the U.S Republic. A hereditary Sovereign put in the place of a subordinate viceroy, underneath an elected President, is too much of a structural mutant to last long.)