The closing prosecutorial arguments began this morning in Chicago signaling the final stages of a rather overstretched court assizes. Hanging in the balance lies the fate of a thousand lawyers.
Twisted thinking has it that now the legal system needs to find Lord Black innocent of all charges. Black has threatened to literally sue everyone else on the planet if he can swing it. The cascade of legal actions ensuing from this penny-ante criminal proceeding looms in the dreams of every senior law partner around this tiny orb called "Earth."
Even if he is found not guilty Black still will face numerous civil actions now waiting in the wings, waiting for this court action to end. Remind yourself of only this, this is only the criminal court action. Especially in the United States, criminal liability does not equate with civil liability. The only relationship is the degree of punishment inflicted on the final civil court settlements. If Black faces a guilty verdict the years in jail will pale compared with the larger civil liability.
A finding of not guilty will cut in half any civil liability. A not guilty vote is likely if the jury can manage to ignore the prescient fact that none of the accused has taken the stand to deny the allegations. I'm no legal expert compared with the array of legal minds whirling moth like around the flame of this case, yet I get this angst that at least one of the defendents could have taken the stand to deny the charges. That failure to take the stand to deny, may impair Blacks's able defense.
Black isn't likely to face jail time if a guilty verdict comes forth at the end of the week. Boring inside the court room I think this is phase one.
2 comments:
If Conrad Black sat in the witness box and uttered more than a few dozen words, he'd not only be found guilty of fraud, the jury would also likely add a couple of lifetimes to his sentence to make sure he never got out and never got a chance to speak to anyone like that, ever again. He is that nasty!
He may be an intellectual but he's never convinced me he's anything but a blowhard people have been forced to listen to because he happened to inherit $10 million when he turned eighteen.
I think Americans would truly hate his smarmy, superior attitude and his penchant for using multisyllabic words where a word with a single syllable would be more understandable.
Legally, putting him on the stand would be a disaster for all the usual reasons.
I'm sure he's bent and broken a bevy of laws that he's not yet been charged with but a good prosecutor would get him to admit to all kinds of illegal crap - for the same reason Jack Nicholson's character in the movie 'A Few Good Men' admitted guilt.
Black is arrogant and proud of his brilliant avoidance of laws, designed to keep lesser men in check. He'd admit to far worse crimes than he's been charged with today, just so we could be impressed with the Big Man.
I hope you're wrong and they put him in jail. I'd like to see some justice in the world, eventually.
I guess I am getting to be old and wise, which actually means I'm tired and disappointed. You can attribute that thought to T.E. Lawrence although I'm sure Conrad would claim it and probably already has claimed it as his own.
Hey, wake up, Gord. My last post was fairly innocuous and it never got published.
Well, maybe it wasn't quite so innocuous as I let on.....
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