There being no news on the Conrad Black trial since yesterday, the media reports on it that have been webbed overnight and today are mostly features that use the trial of Conrad Black as a takeoff point:
1. From CBC News, a review of last week's trial events by Susan Berger.
2. The Globe and Mail has a feature column entitled "Lady Black's guide to survival."
3. From the Providence (Rhode Island) Business News, a report on the takeover of two papers, the Times of Pawtucket and the Call of Woonsocket, by a company called RISN Operations Inc. and the subsequent slashing of each paper's staff. RISN is owned by David Radler's daughter, Melanie.
4. The Boston Globe has an abridged version of Bloomberg's earlier report on the allowance of the "ostrich instruction" by Judge St. Eve.
5. Also from the Globe, a list of some of the guests at Gore Vidal's "Grano Speaker Series" speech, in which he took some potshots at both Conrad and Barbara Black, divided up by prior sympathy or dislike of either.
6. The Globe has a third feature, this one much longer than the others: Ian Brown, asking "Are we losing our lexicon?" Taking the reader through the world of words, Mr. Brown notes that Canadians tend to prefer taciturnity and straightforwardness, relative to both the U.K. and the U.S.
7. An article by Mary Vallis, webbed by the National Post, reports on Judge St. Eve's refusal to grant two motions made by Mark Kipnis' defense counsel Ron Safer. The first one wanted to bar the prosecution from mentioning a $50,000 bonus received by Mr. Kipnis; the second wanted to strike all mention of that particular bonus from the trial record. Near the end of the article, the suggested wording for an amendment of the ostrich instruction, made by Marc Martin after Judge St. Eve had granted a prosecution motion allowing said instruction, is reprinted verbatim.
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Mark Steyn has selected what he considers to be the best reader advice for the defense in his latest entry for the Maclean's Conrad Black trial blog. It recommends a kind of "Johnny Cochrane" approach: to repeatedly say that there was no crime, and to back that argument right up to the hilt.
(Interestingly, I haven't come across any such advice directed at the prosecution from any pundit. All of the advice of that sort that I've encountered has come from amateurs, in the form of insisting that there was indeed a crime. A good sample can be found in the comments section of this Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog entry, and more can be found by poking through the comments of other entries in that blog. I might as well let you know in advance if it's your first time there: the ones that tend to dispense such advice to the prosecution tend also to express open dislike towards Mr. Steyn.)
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3 comments:
It's almost over - any predictions?
Good question "Anonymous". Mr. Ryan, you have remained brilliantly neutral throughout this trial.....on the outside anyway. At what point will you share your views....or predictions?
Thanks to you both for stopping in. I have to admit that I'm "stuck on neutral," to the point where I began what-iffing while thinking of the answer. I'll answer the question in two parts.
1) Unless the defense either bobbles the ball or is blindsided, I believe this trial will end in acquittals. The argument that non-compete agreements with (and payments to) individuals are a normal part of the media-business world, is too easy to make. It's also too easy to say that the prosecution is too hung up on subtleties to the point of abstruseness, encouraging them to miss the obvious. The self-dealing part can be accounted for by the normal-range point...and the defense can point out that this is a serious criminal case where the only witness with any law-enforement experience at all was a defense witness: "If this is really a criminal case, then where was the cop?"
The defense can even back-hand-compliment their way through this: "The government has shown technical erudition to the point of missing the point."
1a) Of course, I could be wrong about this, so I add a CYA [CMOA] modifier: if there are convictions from the jury, Conrad Black and Peter Atkinson are the most at risk of doing time, rather than having their wrist slapped. Jack Boultbee may get away with a wrist-slapping. (It's almost certain that Mark Kipnis will be acquitted.) The prosecution's best angle would be that the defendants showed a contempt for the new (post-Enron) legal regime by acting as if they saw it as nothing other than Congress blowing trendy smoke.
2) As far as a more 'artistic' view of mine is concerned, I had a dark suspicion that they'd all have the book thrown at them. You're free to interpret it, including its role as a secret anchor for my neutrality, in any way that you like. My own bias was influenced by the outcome of the Michael Milken trial back in 1990 or so, when I was still in university.
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