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Eddie Greenspan: defending Conrad Black “was like a forced march through a swamp”

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Douglas Bell

With the curtain set to come down on Friday (with the almost-certain rejection of his appeal to remain free on bail pending appeal), there’s a surprising amount of Conrad Black–related journalistic flotsam and jetsam today. The Star’s Rick Westhead, for example, provides a backgrounder detailing how life will change for his Lordship inside the pokey:

“While Black has a taste for fine cuisine—days before his sentencing, the one-time newspaper baron ordered a roasted beet salad and a ‘duo of veal’ during a dinner with the Star—his menu options, starting perhaps with Monday lunch, will be more pedestrian. ‘There’s a lot of spaghetti and fried and baked chicken, macaroni and cheese,’ says Walt Pavlo, who was sentenced to 48 months for corporate fraud and spent time in U.S. minimum-security prisons. ‘It’s like mediocre high-school cafeteria food, lots of starch.’”

That’s just the kind of justice a Toronto Star reader can really appreciate.

Beyond that bit of nutritional righteousness, there are a couple of wire stories on Black et al.’s rejoinder to the government’s 47-page report. First among them is the AP’s Mike Robinson, who reports that “in his 12-page brief filed with two co-defendants, Black’s attorneys argued that from reading the government’s papers ‘this court would never know the jury acquitted applicants on the overwhelming number of charges.’”

Not if they’d been living under a rock—at the bottom of Lake Michigan, with their fingers in their ears—for the past six months, they wouldn’t.

On a decidedly marginal note, Eddie Greenspan, reflecting on his assignment of defending Black, is reported to have told a classroom of prospective lawyers at the University of Western Ontario that “it was like a forced march through a swamp… I may have closed my eyes at times when the evidence was driving me crazy and I listened to other lawyers… You can go to any court in this country and somebody is sleeping.”

That’s reassuring.

And finally, a word from Lord Black in (where else?) the National Post commenting on the demise of William F. Buckley Jr. in the context of their recent spat:

“This newspaper published, about two months ago, some reflections of mine on a column he [Buckley] had written about my legal travails. It was typical of him that he wrote me a very kind message, and, at great inconvenience to himself, journeyed 30 miles to have dinner with me twice in the following couple of weeks. Though severely bothered by emphysema, arthritis, and lesser ailments, he was still a sparkling conversationalist and a discriminating gourmand.”

Could there be a finer testament to any man, alive or dead, than that he would travel 30 miles to have dinner with Conrad Black?

• Black heading to new ‘big house’ [Toronto Star]
• Conrad Black on William F. Buckley Jr. [National Post]
• Lawyer admits to daily catnaps in court [London Free Press]
• News baron Black in fresh bid to delay start of sentence [Chicago Sun-Times]
• News baron Conrad Black in fresh bid to delay start of sentence [CP]

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Marilyn2 February 28, 2008 at 6:38 p.m.

Black has lost his appeal to stay out on bond pending appeal, various media are reporting as of about 6.30 p.m. Eastern time today (Thursday Feb. 28). Interestingly, his two co-defendants have been granted bail pending appeal.

GravityLevity2 February 28, 2008 at 7:19 p.m.

“in his 12-page brief filed with two co-defendants, Black’s attorneys argued that from reading the government’s papers ‘this court would never know the jury acquitted applicants on the overwhelming number of charges.’”

Uh, if this was significant, why didn't the defense lawyers point it out forcefully in this first appeal document on continuance of bail? This late filing in response to the prosecution smacks of incompetence, desperation, and/or an attempt to smear the prosecution as somehow acting in bad faith.

The fact that Black remained friends with Bill Buckley after Buckley said in print that Black was guilty of some (albeit not very important) crimes, suggests to me that Black's protestations of conscious, furious innocence are not really believed by Black himself.
If I were innocent and in such dire circumstances as Black and his defenders hold him to be, I would hardly forgive a friend who called me guilty in public enough to meet him for dinner twice.

GravityLevity2 February 28, 2008 at 7:29 p.m.

What Marilyn reports is quite good news, and the differential in treatment of the defendents hinges on the obstruction conviction. I semm to remember that some posters on the old Toronto Life blog thought this conviction would be the easiest to overturn on appeal. It seems that the appeal judges think otherwise.

Casey February 28, 2008 at 7:48 p.m.

Could there be a finer testament to any man, alive or dead, than that he would travel 30 miles to have dinner with Conrad Black? - Doug Bell

My sentiments exactly - CB just HAD to drop that umm tidbit / boast / brag? that W.F. Buckley, ailing and infirmed, nevertheless actually believed that CB was / is? so important ( ugghhh ) that Buckley took the time and trouble to travel those 30 miles to dine with CB. *sigh* - Black continues to prove day after day what a complete loser he truly is. I am and continue to be disgusted....with CB, of course...

Casey February 28, 2008 at 7:51 p.m.

Marilyn Anderson February 28, 2008 at 6:38 p.m.

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!!! Thank you, Marilyn - your post is a welcome nugget in an otherwise busy, lousy and workaholic type day for me...:-). Thank for info....

Casey February 28, 2008 at 8:02 p.m.

And while I am at it, anyone here notice what an errr lofty and ummmm respected elder statesman Brian Mulroney has become? While Mila charges up stuff at all the Palm Beach haunts, etc. and appears in all the social pages ( simply google Mila Mulroney and read )with her NY city buddies, Brian pontificates with his Palm Beach friends like the Donald and his trophy wife and combover, the Fanjuls, and other social butterflies aka flunkies, etc. Mulroney and Mila no doubt must have met CB and BA for lattes at Starbucks - both couples can comiserate with each other over their non existent and destroyed respectability, relevance and significance. Again, I am disgusted. Both men could have contributed so so much in their golden years - what a loss......

kjopc February 28, 2008 at 8:05 p.m.

Well, it looks more and more like Lard Black will see the inside of a Florida prison after his latest appeal for bail was denied.

I still won't believe it until it happens.

BTW, what ever happened to securities charges against him in Canada? Our security regulators are so ineffectual that it's like an invitation to rip off shareholders in Canada.

Casey February 28, 2008 at 8:58 p.m.

The place I have been assigned to is relatively good and if I do go there, they will ask me to teach. I almost always hated teachers, but I guess it's an elite occupation in a prison," Black said in an e-mail to www.Independent.ie, operated by Ireland's Independent Newspapers.

"We are very confident of winning at least part of the appeal, and of sharply reducing time served. My book about this outrage is almost ready, so if I must go, I will not be going quietly. It's like back to boarding school, without, one dares to assume, the tedium and indignity of corporal punishment." - Conrad Black

How can anyone with a modicum of intelligence have any respect, residual or whatsoever, for a person who thinks like this? Why I shall never be a Judge? I would have literally thrown *a* or *the* book at Black in terms of prison time. And made sure the landed on his bloated head. The man is sickening in the extreme and the more he talks or writes, the bigger the hole that he has dug for himself grows. What a complete loser...

Fintan February 29, 2008 at 2:15 a.m.

What lovely news to wake up to on a frosty Friday morning! I read it in Marilyn's post - thanks Marilyn - but I wanted further re-confirmation and then some more. And good old Auntie provided it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7270...

Here's another link (the same news, but you couldn't read it often enough):

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section...

It wos the camera wot got 'im!

Poor old Eddie Greenspan, it must have been a pain in the arse in a way having to defend such a pain in the arse, but I think his simile about a forced march through a swamp is a little off the mark.

I've seen all those movies about prisoners being force marched through swamps. Unlike Eddie, they were not being paid millions.

If I were a Catholic, I'd be down to the church to light candles in thanks for His Lardship's comeuppance, but instead I've just sent a text message to Kathmandu to have money paid to a waiter I know for his daughter's schooling for the next year. At least Conrad Black has indirectly made some kind of a difference: the daughter of a poor waiter now has a chance at growing into a literate adult.

And maybe I'll get some good karma.

I still won't feel 100% certain that His Lardship has gotten his comeuppance until I read that the prison gate has shut behind him.

I wish I were a fly on the wall in his mansion today as he and Morticia squirm and try to think of every desperate, last-shot ploy to escape the inevitable.

Fintan February 29, 2008 at 6:53 a.m.

It looks like the Torygraph is not all that cut up about the fate of its former "proprietor" and self-styled saviour. I'll bet many people there who had to endure his browbeating and Morticia's nastiness are bursting a gut laughing at him. Not much sympathy in this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht...

It is not at all certain that His Lardship will be given a teaching job. Cleaning toilets is still a possibility. Then he can add a new title to his baronetcy, privy counsellor, knight of the Holy See, Order of Canada, etc. - privy sanitation operative.

How odd, as the article notes, that he has the option of reporting to the prison BEFORE 3 March. Who on earth would want to do that? But if he does, it will at least add some credence to his assertion that he will bear his sentence as a badge of honour. ROFLMAO

ValC February 29, 2008 at 8:23 a.m.

well, those big doors haven't clanged shut behind CB just yet, but it does look as though everything is proceeding towards that particular end. And yet, I'm not doing the Dance of Joy here.

Probably the last thing the Blacks want is my pity, but I do feel sorry for them. It's quite a distance to fall. CB, with all his abilities and talents, fell off that cliff and has no one to blame but himself. It makes me think of King Lear, in that storm, when he had lost everything.

By the way, although I am not at all an expert in body language I have got the impression from all the photos in the media that CB and BA truly care about each other very much. My opinion is that BA will surprise everyone with the depth of her loyalty to him.

GravityLevity2 February 29, 2008 at 11:26 a.m.

"How odd, as the article notes, that he has the option of reporting to the prison BEFORE 3 March."

This is boilerplate in American sentences where the sentenced person is not immediately retained in custody.

Reasons for someone choosing to begin his or her sentence early are various: to avoid the glare of publicity; to get a short sentence over with quickly; and, for people poorer than Black, to have a place to stay after a rental lease is over or after your residence has been sold, or seized by creditors, but before your deadline to report to jail.

GravityLevity2 February 29, 2008 at 11:44 a.m.

"By the way, although I am not at all an expert in body language I have got the impression from all the photos in the media that CB and BA truly care about each other very much. My opinion is that BA will surprise everyone with the depth of her loyalty to him."

Given their professional backgrounds, Black and Amiel do know a few things about image and the media, and keeping up appearances in public.

However, I tend to agree, Valerie; and Amiel has stayed married to Black far longer than to any of her other husbands. However, after the honeymoon and until the trial, they probably did not spend a long periods of time together. As Fintan and his missus demonstrate with their coming anniversary, some marriages thrive when the spouses have away time from each other. Amiel will probably feel relief, along with other emotions, when Black goes off to jail.

In the coming years, she will likely be torn between loyalty to her imprisoned husband (which means frequent prison visits) and a desire to get away from Palm Beach, which she doesn't like. I think that in the GTA and in London she has friends and family who would be willing to meet her in a coffee shop.

jade_lee February 29, 2008 at 1:06 p.m.

There is a thing called a commital warrant that documents Black's sentence, it reads Mar 3rd as the beginning of his sentence, I have never heard of a convicted person being able to get their sentence over with earlier, sounds ridiculous to me, if anything they are like Black himself and pay oodles of cash to lawyers to extend their freedom.

In my career I have only once came across a prisoner who did not want an early release we offered him and that was very rare and he was very strange! We have all heard the stories of how the poor often spent their winters in prison to avoid dying in the cold here in Canada but that speaks to other social issues and that too is rare in 2008 with all those crack houses to crash at.....

Your alluding to the fact that a property owner would surrender early to prison as a way to avoid the cost of a motel perhaps speaks to your own personal frugality, that my fellow blogger gave me a chuckle.

Black will unlikely have to clean the toilets in his dorm setting Fintan as usually the younger inmates would not let him as they tend to respect aging. I somehow think Black will want to clean the toilet he uses to ensure others see him as a "stand up guy". I read that Black has a good sense of humour, he will need it to survive there for that long in prison. The sentence is too long. Caging up people who do not pose a danger to others is wrong. Punishment needs to be examined more closely.

Casey February 29, 2008 at 1:08 p.m.

John Bell February 29, 2008 at 11:44 a.m.
Given their professional backgrounds, Black and Amiel do know a few things about image and the media, and keeping up appearances in public.

My take on that perception is absolutely correct. Their images that they want to project are always planned and very well thought - out, except for " vermins ", " Nazis ", etc. comments from them. No doubt they probably bit their lips when they realised what they had spewed.
BA and CB are THE most image - conscious individuals I have ever had the misfortune to read about. I am sticking with my prediction that BA will fly the coop quietly, without fanfare and about one or 2 years into CB's prison time.

Casey February 29, 2008 at 2:08 p.m.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s...

Do these forgettable characters see things clearly and do they have some sort of strange " death wish "? The link I provided above reports that BA just spent a quarter of a million on Oscar De La Renta collection - is BA for real? Has this paragon of conspicuous consumption really believe that civil litigants against her and her husband will ignore this over the top spending? These 2 people seem to want to hated and laughed at - behaviour like BA's either purports to snub her nose at all those who believe Black to be guilty or she is just plain stupid. I am in awe of the actions of the 2 Blacks.

Fintan February 29, 2008 at 3:56 p.m.

Great link, Casey. I'm a bit too much under the affluence of incohol right now to write anything coherent, but here's another link to an article in the times by James Bone. I always enjoy the Boner's articles:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...

Not that I blame Morticia too much if she splashes out a quarter of a million on Oscar de la Renta gear. The civil suits will take it all away from her in due course anyway. And who am I to criticise her. I spent €800 on my Armani glasses and €400 on an Armani sports jacket (in a sale). Some people that I admire a lot are big into Armani! But $250,000? I could make Helsinki's entire population of bag ladies look attractive for less money than that!

Casey February 29, 2008 at 6:39 p.m.

jade lee February 29, 2008 at 1:06 p.m.

Very valid points that you raise above. Longish sentence for someone like Black probably solve nothing. Yet it is troublesome to ponder that you and I think along these lines of mercy and empathy regarding CB's prison term - one wonders what we would state if CB were a destitute, far less noble citizen than a Lord, an individual caught up in these same convictions...? Would we be saying the same things, Jade_lee? It is painful to contmplate the fact that sympathy for Black emanates from his once lofty social and financial position in society. Net net? I believe that Black's sentence is fair and deserving. But you do make some worthwhile points, nevertheless.

leaf February 29, 2008 at 7:48 p.m.

Casey Smith February 28, 2008 at 2:31 p.m.
Fintan Itse February 28, 2008 at 2:21 p.m.

Ha, ha. Obsession with CB! What is this blog about anyway, African wildlife?

-------

i repeat my question Casey smith: what is the difference between obsession and interest?

jade_lee February 29, 2008 at 8:50 p.m.

Obsession has an emotional component attached to it.

leaf February 29, 2008 at 10:43 p.m.

from the dictionary:

interest: the feeling of a person whose attention, concern, or curiosity is particularly engaged by something.

obsession:Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.
A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.

------

i think you meant obsession has an "unreasonable" emotional component attached to it.
yes? no?

we could ask doug bell if the blog was intended for people who had an interest in the trial of CB or for those who had an obsession with the trial and everything CB.

obviously, it attracted both types...
mr. itse and Miz Smith simply view their emotions as reasonable. it's called delusional.

GravityLevity2 March 1, 2008 at 1:47 a.m.

jade-lee I think you are mistaken about American jurisprudence--Martha Stewart, for instance, began her sentence early, to get it over with. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6205192/

jade_lee March 1, 2008 at 3:51 a.m.

She won an appeal to stay out of jail pending the appeal of her conviction, then changed her mind. She has yet to win the appeal with respect to her conviction or sentence if my memory serves me correctly. SO in the end she did not serve her sentence earlier but in fact served her sentence later than she would have had she not appealed her conviction and not asked to remain on bail originally until such appeal was heard. Sounds confusing but I understand what I mean....lol