Back to Black

In mid-March I posted a piece recommending that everyone should pay close attention to the Conrad Black trial, which was just getting underway in Chicago. I styled it as a "celebrity death match". Well, if anyone died, it was probably from boredom. I had expected legal tantrums, outrageous tales of high living and who knows what else. There was some of that, but mostly it was about non-compete agreements, the workings of audit committees and the technicalities of mail fraud. Despite that, I've been following it avidly, which just goes to show how a lifetime spent in the financial sector can mess you up.

Black has now been found guilty on four of the thirteen counts against him -- three of mail fraud, relating to the non-competes, and one of obstructing justice. (It almost came out much worse for him: according to one of the jurors quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail, earlier in the week a majority of the jurors also wanted to convict on another of the fraud charges, plus a racketeering charge, but were finally dissuaded by the minority). Black plans to appeal the convictions, and sentencing will not take place until late November, so he won't be heading for the Big House any time soon.

The prosecution did not make a particularly strong case against Black, and came in for a lot of criticism for pushing the "class envy" button a little too hard. In the event, Black was acquitted of the major lifestyle-related charges -- spending company money on a party for his wife, and buying his Manhattan apartment from the company at an unduly low price -- but it may still have been this part of the case that led to his conviction on the charge of obstructing justice, which carries the longest potential jail term.

Why do I say this? Well, the charge related to an incident in which Black was captured on CCTV carrying boxes of papers from his Toronto office. The lifestyle evidence must have had some part in convincing the jury that carrying boxes was not a normal activity for Black. After all, he famously attended a fancy-dress ball dressed as Cardinal Richelieu, not as a UPS deliveryman.

The lifestyle evidence also produced one of the great quotes of the whole affair, though it was penned before the actual trial began. Peggy Wente of the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote that "there are only a handful of women in the world who can afford to dress the way Lady Black does. Unfortunately, Lady Black may not be one of them".

There could still be some fun and games to come here, but given the tedium of the trial itself, it may not be worth trying to bag a ringside seat. Pity, then, poor Mark Steyn, who sat through and blogged the whole thing as one of Black's very few sympathisers, only to miss the day of the verdicts because of a prior commitment in Madrid!