Conrad Black will be released today from a federal prison in Florida.
His arrival in Canada as a temporary resident is impending. As a legal analyst who closely followed and wrote about Black's remarkable case, it is worth noting the dramatic gulf between the start of the case and its present conclusion.
It began in 2004 with a Special Committee Report alleging that Black had led a ''corporate kleptocracy'' of Hollinger that looted the company of more than $200 million of unauthorized management payments and $90 million of bogus non-competition payments.
The report became the blueprint for the indictment that was announced against Conrad Black and other senior executives of Hollinger in 2005. Black was charged with multiple counts of mail and wire fraud as well as money laundering, racketeering, tax fraud and obstruction of justice.
The trial took place in downtown Chicago in the spring of 2008. It was followed by a series of appeals including a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court where it became clear that Conrad Black was tried on an illegal honest services fraud theory that unfairly expanded the roadmap for the jury to convict.
Conrad Black was ultimately tried by a jury on a series of fraud counts totalling $60 million in relation to alleged improper non-competition payments. By the conclusion of the appeal process, Black managed to overcome 99 per cent of the fraud alleged in his indictment.
His share of payment in the proven fraud amounted to $285,000. He had an additional conviction for obstruction of justice for a crime committed entirely under Canadian jurisdiction.
Eddie Greenspan, one of Black's trial lawyers, described ''everyone talking in terms of forty years'' if Conrad Black was convicted of each charge he faced. In the end, he has served about three years in a couple of federal prisons.
Conrad Black's case also helped to expose the failings of a severely flawed U.S. justice system. It is a system that unfairly favours the prosecution and is desperately in need of reform.
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