Are you ever coming home, Conrad Black?
(Updated)
Unless someone is a threat to society, I always welcome the release of a felon from prison. We jail too many people, and everyone deserves a second chance. I hold this view despite the scurrilous propaganda of the Harper povernment that tries to convince us we’re endangered by a violent crime wave (we’re not) and that stiffer prison terms will solve the problem, if one exists (they won’t).
So I welcome the news that the former media baron Conrad Black has been released on bail from a Florida prison. Judge Amy St. Eve, who sentenced Black to six and one-half years on fraud and obstruction of justice charges, will not yet allow him to return to Canada. She requires more “certainty” of his financial condition.
Black says he would like to return pending a final resolution of the charges by the U.S. Court of Appeal. “It’s noice this time of year in Toronto.” Although he’s no longer a citizen, having given this up in his pursuit of the British Lordship title he ultimately attained, he still owns the Black family mansion (heavily mortgaged) on the Bridlepath in Toronto.
Mr. Black (forget Lord Black) seems to have emerged from prison a humbled, albeit still determined, man. He’s written of new understandings he gained of his fellow man while serving time in the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex.
He’s found out that inmates are not so different from the rest of us; more often, the victims of family neglect, medical or mental health problems, and plain bad luck.
The biggest question mark hanging over his future remains the obstruction of justice charge, which the Supremes did not touch. However, in finding the government at fault in its prosecution of the “honest services” and other charges, the Court may have undermined the obstruction charge as well.
If the fraud charges are found baseless, doesn’t that also render baseless any alleged obstruction of justice in their connection?
Conrad Black occupies a unique niche in both publishing and literature. Almost any adjective can — and has been — applied to him: spendthrift, litigious, irascible. He is also a writer of uncommon facility, a master of words and a maker of phrases. He is as well a dauntless researcher, an erudite judge of policies and men, and an entertaining raconteur. His biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Maurice Duplessis have all earned best seller status.
He’s in the final stages of writing the second installment to his autobiography, The Fight of My Life. McClelland & Stewart hope to publish this fall.
Aside from hearing Conrad Black speak on a couple of occasions, my only direct contact with him came from standing beside him and his wife Barbara Amiel, at a Toronto airport baggage carousel. I had flown in from Israel, as I presume they had. The difference was that they had an Air Canada hostess shepherding their bags for them.
Mr. Black rendered Canadian journalism a great favor in founding The National Post. Among other things, it’s made the Globe and Mail a serious newspaper, a status it did not always possess.
He has always maintained the charges against him are groundless. Now he’s much closer to their total nullification. We hope he will soon be a completely free man, and we wish him well.
