We now turn to the defense side:
From Macleans.ca website in Canada:
The big picture
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 12:43:38
Eddie Greenspan: "The government wants you to rely on David Radler to convict Conrad Black for having relied on David Radler."
Case disclosed
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 12:24:12
"They saw the disclosures and signed their names to them," emphasized Mr Greenspan, "because there was nothing wrong with them."
The government's argument broadened yesterday. They're now demanding that the "paper trail" be regarded not as proof of innocence but only as confirmation of how cunning the scheme was. As Greenspan added, "It's hard, I submit, not to be insulted by the story Thompson, Kravis, Burt and the government expect you to believe."
It's quiet out there, too quiet...
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 12:15:50
There's an almost eerie lack of note-taking going on among the jury.
Hiding in plain sight
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 12:10:58
Eddie Greenspan just addressed the government's claim that the US community non-competes weren't even "on the Audit Committee's radar". Counsel just pulled up the September 1st 2000 memo sent to each of the three Audit Committee members whose first item is headlined "NON-COMPETITION AGREEMENTS" and details the percentages allocated to non-competes in the relevant US transactions.
Greenspan just made the obvious point - that these Audit Committee A-listers saw these items and thought nothing of them because "there was nothing wrong with them".
That sounds right. Conrad Black and co are really the victims of a game of dominoes started by Richard Breeden four years ago. He persuaded Governor Thompson and co that there was a bad odour about the Black team and leaned on them sufficiently to persuade them they needed to distance themselves from their previous behaviour.
But Greenspan's right. These guys saw this stuff and nodded because there's no crime.
Radlered out
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 11:30:12
The bubblegum blonde, whose luxuriously upholstered presence in the jury box and ferocious gum-popping abilities have been previously noted, is looking very bored. The note-taking - very obvious during the prosecutor's argument - has entirely ceased.
Too much Radler. This is a case against David Radler, when it should be the case for Conrad Black.
Production values
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 10:48:16
Eddie Greenspan has been speaking for half-an-hour or so with nothing to punctuate it except a bit of audio from the 2003 general meeting. It's fine, but I hope, as I said yesterday, we're going to get some graphics and tapes. For example, he referred to Jeffrey Cramer's opening statement and its assertion that David Radler would testify to the scheme and he would be supported by documents. As Greenspan noted, Radler did not reveal any scheme and he was not supported by documents.
But this point would have been more effectively made with the Cramer quote splashed up on screen, its hollowness in giant type. Without that, the bogusness of Cramer's assertion is less obviously a fact and merely an opinion out of Greenspan's mouth.
I trust this isn't the way the entire day's going to go, or Conrad Black's in real trouble.
Good question
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 10:26:50
Eddie Greenspan, QC began closing arguments for the Black team a few moments ago by recalling the shareholders referenced by the government in opening statements - the alleged widows with their retirement savings, the soi-disant working mom and her kid's college fund. As Eddie wondered:
"Where are those shareholders? Where are those victims?"
Why didn't the government call Laura Jereski or Lee Cooperman or the other Hollinger investors whose e-mail complaints they were happy to share with the court? Because on the witness stand, the "victims" would have made plain that, if they are such, they've been victimized twice - not just by Black but by the post-Black regime.
Can you hang four men for a victimless crime? The answer should be clearer by the end of the day.
Thath ridiculuth!
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 09:54:30
In her closing argument yesterday, Julie Ruder mostly stuck to her memorized script, except for a recurring expression of contempt for defence arguments: "It's ridiculous!" - or, as Ms Ruder would say, ridikkiluss.
She has a point. Certain aspects of this scattershot defence are ridikkiluss. Despite the multiple occasions on which his lawyers have brought it up, the fact that Jack Boultbee was briefly publisher of Saturday Night - in 1987 - is not a reason for a community newspaper group in Alabama to pay him a big-time non-compete fee.
That is, indeed, ridikkiluss. Likewise, it's ridikkiluss for Peter Atkinson's counsel to argue that he's just a small-town Canadian lawyer, knows nothing about the big scary behemoth to the south, when he's a director of a US public company and raking in big payments not to compete in the US.
Yesterday the prosecution belatedly succeeded in imposing a plausible narrative on events at Hollinger
around the turn of the century. In the remainder of the week, the defence better have a coherent narrative of their own, preferably based upon a lack of any crime. But having been publisher of Saturday Night 20 years ago ain't gonna cut it.
Lawyer talk
Mark Steyn June 19, 2007 00:44:40
Back in the privacy of my own keyboard, I'm a little flummoxed by Julie Ruder's argument today, which boiled down to: Cherchez le pourquoi, the Big Why. Oh, sure, she said, these guys'll tell you they filled in the SEC forms and got the contracts signed and put it in stuff for the Audit Committee to read. But they can't be upfront about why they did what they did.I'll buy that argument from the TV movie but not from a government prosecutor. The law says get it in writing, do the paperwork, fill in the forms, but the government says no, none of that stuff matters, we want to know why, we want Stanislavskian motivation. Sorry, but law is paperwork. If it's signed by both parties, it's a legally binding non-compete, regardless of whether one party wanted it more than the other. Indeed, for the government to argue the opposite comes close to de-legitimizing one of the key pillars of law and civilized society: the contract.And if the issue is "corporate governance", whose bag is that? Ms Ruder said today that the Audit Committee "failed the shareholders". But why is that, belatedly, such a small deal to her? She went on and on today about Black and co's fiduciary duty to Hollinger International's shareholders. But Black was also chairman of Hollinger Inc, another public company, and Ravelston, a private company. So he had fiduciary duties to three sets of shareholders and, given that Ravelston supplied management services to International and Inc was the controlling shareholder of International, that would suggest at the very minimum a much greater potential for conflicts of interest and related-party transactions than most companies. Therefore, three esteemed figures such as Governor Thompson, Mrs Kravis and Ambassador Burt must surely have understood that the minute they saw the words "Hollinger Inc" or "Ravelston" that it was, by definition, something that fell in their sphere of responsibility.I think Conrad Black's lawyers need to expose the logic of Ms Ruder's arguments: If they're allowed to stand, what's the point of an audit committee and what's the point of a contract? Lots of us are entitled to get sick of "lawyer talk" but not surely the government.
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