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Conrad Black: My prison education

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Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#31

Post by fleitz »

mcantelon wrote: post #20

"Veterans of even 20 years in the federal prison system could not recall anyone being bailed in mid-sentence like this, and particularly not on the heels of unanimous Supreme and Circuit Appeals Court decisions." The justice system evidently works in mysterious ways for rich, connected neoconservatives. Conrad Black's fraud was blatant, he hid and destroyed evidence of it, and has shown no remorse. After siphoning mo…

The only difference between Black and normal people in the justice system is that Black has the resources to make it a fair fight.

I applaud Black for fighting it all the way and because he fought it all the way this one of many egregious statutes will no longer be used to put innocent people in jail. If the state could have proved a fraud charge they would have, but they couldn't. You don't get unanimous supreme court victories by accident. The law was clearly illegal.

Lord Black is an example Canadians should hold high who rejected his country by giving up citizenship rather than letting politics get in the way of much deserved honours. He is a true patriot.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#32

Post by pg »

d0mine wrote: post #6
yoseph wrote: post #3

A couple great quotes: "I had seen at close range the injustice of sentences one hundred times more severe for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, a straight act of discrimination against African-Americans, that even the first black president and attorney general have only ameliorated with tepid support for a measure, still being debated, to reduce the disparity of sentence from 100 to one to 18 to one." I'm hones…

Prosecutors win over 99% (99.2% in 2007 [1]) cases in Russia. [1]: http://www.forbesrussia.ru/forbes/issue/2008-11/7199-nevinov...

Interesting. I bet this rate would be a useful element in a corruptness index for countries.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#33

Post by halostatue »

fleitz wrote: post #31
mcantelon wrote: post #20

"Veterans of even 20 years in the federal prison system could not recall anyone being bailed in mid-sentence like this, and particularly not on the heels of unanimous Supreme and Circuit Appeals Court decisions." The justice system evidently works in mysterious ways for rich, connected neoconservatives. Conrad Black's fraud was blatant, he hid and destroyed evidence of it, and has shown no remorse. After siphoning mo…

The only difference between Black and normal people in the justice system is that Black has the resources to make it a fair fight. I applaud Black for fighting it all the way and because he fought it all the way this one of many egregious statutes will no longer be used to put innocent people in jail. If the state could have proved a fraud charge they would have, but they couldn't. You don't get unanimous supreme cou…

Lord Black is not a Canadian patriot. A patriot would not have given his citizenship up for power and dubious honours. There are things that COULD have been done without forcing the loss of his citizenship, such as honourary knighthoods. Instead, he decided he wanted something explicitly prohibited by Canadian law.

I believe that Conrad Black committed fraud; I also believe he was railroaded by the American legal system. It's good that he can fight this because he has money and powerful friends, but America should do better. I find it interesting that Black decries the public defender system (and it IS broken) but offers no ideas for what could fix or replace it.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#34

Post by kevbin »

helmut_hed wrote: post #12

I've followed this case over the years and it's completely in character to see that he has no remorse whatsoever. He had been draining funds from his company, Hollinger International, into his own pockets for years. Shareholder pressure forced an investigation by the board, upon which he resigned, and was subsequently convicted for securities fraud. And of course he now describes himself as one of the "people, who, l…

According to the indictment, he wasn't charged with securities fraud (§1348) but with mail fraud (§1341), wire fraud (§1343), and honest services fraud (§1346).

Black's lawyers have an interesting note about the appeal here: http://www.gibsondunn.com/Publications/Pages/USSupremeCourtT...

As I understand it, Black negotiated a huge management fee authorized by Hollinger's board. The board figured-out they'd made a bad deal. Black got greedier and tried to get the management fee re-characterized as a non-compete to avoid Canadian taxes. The board schemed to get rid of Black and get the fees rescinded. The SEC got involved, the IRS got involved. The Hollinger board members with government savvy (e.g., Henry Kissinger) ran away when the US Attorney (Fitzgerald) got involved. The others cowered and said whatever necessary to keep them from becoming targets of the grand jury investigation. Radler fell into Fitzgerald's arms and sang whatever song kept him out of Lompoc. Black, Kipnis, and Boultbee were convicted on 1 of 11 counts: depriving the company they were running (Hollinger) of its right to honest services (§1346) and using the mail (§1341) and telephone to (§1343) do so.

Honest services is defined in § 1346, which reads in total "For the purposes of this chapter, the term “scheme or artifice to defraud” includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services." But the feds have been broadening the case law since the 1940s and use it as a catch all for corruption and fraud cases. It's so broad that every justice from Ginsberg to Scalia just called it unconstitutionally broad. It's broad enough to cover a lot of everyday business deals.

Fitzgerald spent a lot of effort detailing Black's lifestyle and Hollinger's willingness to subsidize it; but Hollinger's board was aware of and approved those subsidies. My feeling is that the jury figured someone who lived Black's lifestyle at the expense of a company was doing something wrong and the only thing in the indictment that fit was the overly-broad honest services fraud: shareholder-supported-lifestyle fraud, the same thing that got one of the Enron guys. Those kinds of arrangements are wrong and inefficient; but probably shouldn't be illegal, lest a whole bunch of other common business practices become scrutinized, regulated, and outlawed.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#35

Post by patio11 »

pg wrote: post #32
d0mine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors win over 99% (99.2% in 2007 [1]) cases in Russia. [1]: http://www.forbesrussia.ru/forbes/issue/2008-11/7199-nevinov...

Interesting. I bet this rate would be a useful element in a corruptness index for countries.

Over seven nines of charged cases in Japan most years. 100 pct of all jury trials ever. Do we win? (I do not think it is a very useful metric. Japan has a problem, but it is forcing confessions as the sole investigatory tactic, not corruption. The conviction rates for any Western democracy should be ninety plus, or prosecutors are bringing cases they should know are insufficient, to the detriment of the public and innocent alike.)

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#36

Post by nopassrecover »

yoseph wrote: post #3

A couple great quotes: "I had seen at close range the injustice of sentences one hundred times more severe for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, a straight act of discrimination against African-Americans, that even the first black president and attorney general have only ameliorated with tepid support for a measure, still being debated, to reduce the disparity of sentence from 100 to one to 18 to one." I'm hones…

Not to distract from the point but if crack users are 100 times more likely to commit other crimes (theft/assault) as a result of their crack use then this is a "fair" sentence.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#37

Post by nandemo »

patio11 wrote: post #35
pg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I bet this rate would be a useful element in a corruptness index for countries.

Over seven nines of charged cases in Japan most years. 100 pct of all jury trials ever. Do we win? (I do not think it is a very useful metric. Japan has a problem, but it is forcing confessions as the sole investigatory tactic, not corruption. The conviction rates for any Western democracy should be ninety plus, or prosecutors are bringing cases they should know are insufficient, to the detriment of the public and in…

I agree that it's not a very useful metric. On the confessions: Japanese police can detain suspects and question them days on end without allowing them to talk to a lawyer.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#38

Post by ZachPruckowski »

pg wrote: post #32
d0mine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors win over 99% (99.2% in 2007 [1]) cases in Russia. [1]: http://www.forbesrussia.ru/forbes/issue/2008-11/7199-nevinov...

Interesting. I bet this rate would be a useful element in a corruptness index for countries.

I'd model a criminal conviction as indicative of one of four possibilities:

1) Defendant is guilty and the police did their job right, bringing strong evidence to the prosecutor. 2) Defendant is innocent, but there's a weight of misinterpreted evidence that his defense fails to overcome. 3) Defense is exceptionally shoddy in the face of an average-to-weak prosecutorial case. 4) Corruption.

To disentangle the effects of gains in (1) & (4) on increases in the conviction rate, you need a metric of police efficiency that's unaffected by corruption.

For instance, a country with DNA or fingerprint forensics will have a higher conviction rate than one without DNA/fingerprints, but as a result of solid police work, not as a result of corruption.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#39

Post by mustpax »

jerf wrote: post #30
mustpax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much of an argument in favor of the status quo to say it could have been worse. The North Korean regime has a worse censorship record than China, but that doesn't make the situation in China any less troubling.

What's your target? In a perfect world, a prosecutor only brings a case if they have enough evidence to have a reasonable expectation of winning. I honestly don't know if 90% is a problem, but the natural knee-jerk "fair" outcome of 50% would actually mean that half the time, a prosecutor is bringing a case that they shouldn't have. That sounds like an awfully high rate of false charges to me. 90% doesn't sound so wr…

Agreed, the statistic bears further exploration and analysis. A figure like 99% percent does raise some eyebrows, and I would argue, so does 90%. But we shouldn't leave it there.

Re: Conrad Black: My prison education

#40

Post by fleitz »

halostatue wrote: post #33
fleitz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between Black and normal people in the justice system is that Black has the resources to make it a fair fight. I applaud Black for fighting it all the way and because he fought it all the way this one of many egregious statutes will no longer be used to put innocent people in jail. If the state could have proved a fraud charge they would have, but they couldn't. You don't get unanimous supreme cou…

Lord Black is not a Canadian patriot. A patriot would not have given his citizenship up for power and dubious honours. There are things that COULD have been done without forcing the loss of his citizenship, such as honourary knighthoods. Instead, he decided he wanted something explicitly prohibited by Canadian law. I believe that Conrad Black committed fraud; I also believe he was railroaded by the American legal sys…

It's not prohibited by law. Canadian law has no jurisdiction in other countries.

Also, if titular honors are prohibited by foreign governments why do we have a Queen?

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