Live Blogging Lord Black Trial. Finshing of Closing Arguments.

From Macleans.ca website in Canada:

Motive of the year
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 11:46:39
Yesterday, Ron Safer wondered: "Why would Mark Kipnis risk everything for nothing?"
Today prosecutor Sussman rose to the challenge: "Maybe he wanted to be the next Peter Atkinson."
No disrespect to the current Peter Atkinson, but that's got to be the least likely motive ever advanced. Even Mr Sussman seemed to sense this might be a stretch and retreated to his catchphrase: "But you know what? Maybe it was just the Hollinger corporate culture?"
Crime passionel
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 11:41:40
"People commit crimes for a million different reasons," said Mr Sussman. "Money. Power. Passion. Anger."
The prosecutor seems to have a lot of that last one this morning.

Shoot me now
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 11:23:09
Another lady now has her head in her hands. Mr Sussman is yelling something about US tax returns.

Holding the crowd spellbound
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 11:19:53
One lady juror appears to be reading. A book? The paper? Her bus ticket? This blog?
If it's the last, hi there, the pink really suits you, free for a drink at lunchtime?

Strategic error
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 11:13:04
Mr Sussman's big mistake was to re-argue the entire case. But, adding to the general gaiety, he's chosen to do it in an entirely random order.
Patrick Fitzgerald picked a good day to go to the beach.


Pre-rebutting the re-rebuttal
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 10:57:05
"Ms Ruder just handed me a note reminding me not to forget the context."
Gee, thanks for sharing, Eric. He's now providing a post-modern auto-commentary on his own speech.

A new tic
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 10:46:13
Mr Sussman has a new verbal mannerism, an interrogative "okay?" or "'kay?" on the end of his multiple points. It makes him sound rather condescending, as if he's talking to a jury of first-graders. But on he ploughs. As the old showbiz adage says, always leave 'em wanting less.

But you know what?
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 10:42:04
Mr Sussman is back on his favourite verbal tic: "But you know what?"
I think the jury do know what. I hate to pre-rebut the government's re-rebuttal, but this may be a rebuttal too far.

Rebuttal without end
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 10:40:53
Mr Sussman just announced he'll be taking up the morning with his "rebuttal", either because he needs to keep yakking till the jury forgets Ron Safer's closing or because he understands he needs to rebut his flop rebuttal of yesterday. But at any rate he's going to keep rebutting until he gets it right.
This rebuttal is longer than most sentences in Canada. But, even in Chicago, Mr Sussman is trying the jury's patience. They've heard it all and they want to get on with it.

A star is worn
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 10:28:58
One of the weirdest aspects of the government's rebuttal - so weird it made the front page of The Chicago Tribune was prosecutor Sussman's disavowal of David Radler. The government's line now is that Radler is not the "star witness": he was just a bit of "colour commentary" not the play-by-play guy; he was there just as a bonus, to give you a flavour of life at Hollinger, etc.
Okay. But in that case who are the stars? "The star witnesses are the buyers," Mr Sussman declared.
Really? The purchasers of Hollinger's newspapers seem more like the gentlemen of the chorus, singing the same line over and over. If they're the stars, then there aren't any: they're peripheral to the story, except insofar as their signatures are on freely signed and legally enforceable contracts. What matters is what they did, not what they say: the buyers, in that sense, have non-speaking parts.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney, sat in for the first several hours of Mr Sussman's rebuttal and then left early. Cramps? A bathroom break? A sense that life is fleeting and he wanted to see the pyramids before he died?
Or, sensing that this umpteenth recalibration of the prosecution was another bust, did he scurry upstairs to cook up a new tack?
We'll find out this morning.

The end is a little nigher
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 09:18:52
The case should go to the jury today. Yes, I know I said that yesterday, and a week ago, and maybe even a month ago. But honestly we're down to the very final stages of prosecutor Sussman's re-rebuttal of his previous rebuttal of his original buttal.
The butt stops here.
Unless it doesn't, in which case tune in tomorrow.

Pickin' an' a-grinnin'
Mark Steyn June 27, 2007 00:29:07
I'm impressed that lead prosecutor Eric Sussman managed to keep a straight face for this line from his "rebuttal": "We don't pick witnesses. We don't get to choose the witnesses."Really? They picked and chose the fellow who bought The Jamestown Sun from North Dakota, but called nobody from CanWest to bolster their assertion that two defendants "inserted themselves" into a $3.5 billion deal. To testify to the auditing of an American public company, they picked and chose Marilyn Stitt from KPMG in Toronto but nobody from the KPMG office south of the border which was principally responsible for dealing with International. Etc. They picked and chose and arranged the plea bargain/immunity agreement/call-off-the-SEC-dogs deal of every one of their witnesses.Despite the huge advantage the US system offers by allowing the government this "rebuttal" of closing argument, prosecutor Sussman never quite got going this afternoon, interrupted by cellphones, ailing persons in the courtroom, and a barrage of objections from Black counsel Ed Genson. A few of them were even more or less vaguely well-founded. When Sussman put a chart up of the distributions of the non-compete payments in CanWest, he put arrows to Conrad ($19 million) and to Ravelston ($38 million) and to Jack Boultbee ($2 million) before winding up with what International got, in extra-large type:
$0

Genson objected on the grounds that the defendant isn't being charged with taking the $19 million in the CanWest deal. Sussman batted that aside: "It's the zero that Mr Black is charged with. That's the fraud. It's the

ZERO."Mr Genson objected to this, too, on the grounds that Conrad hasn't been charged with any zero. Moments later, he objected again, this time to the prosecutor's "snotty tone". The judge politely queried whether "the 'snotty tone' objection" is acknowledged in US jurisprudence. Perhaps counsel should have charged that Mr Sussman is a zero.At any rate, the day ended but the "rebuttal" hadn't. And so, despite the jurors' wish to get the hell on with the judge's instructions, tomorrow morning Mr Sussman will rise again to re-rebuttalize the room.