Conrad Black’s conviction set aside
Posted June 24, 2010 8:26 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The U.S. Supreme Court has set aside three mail fraud convictions against former Canadian media baron Conrad Black Thursday, saying the law under which he was convicted was too broad.
However, Black has not been exonerated in the case, as the court has left the ultimate resolution of the law to a lower appeals court in Chicago.
The Black ruling was handed down alongside a ruling on former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling in limiting the use of a federal fraud law that has been a favourite of white-collar crime prosecutors.
The 28 word law makes it illegal for public officials and executives to commit fraud by depriving those who they work for of the right to what they deem “honest services”.
Black’s defence objected to the way the jury was instructed during the trial about the “Honest Services” law. His lawyers said it was impossible to determine what supported the jury’s verdict.
Senior editor of Maclean’s magazine, Steve Maich told 680News he has been communicating with Black from his jail cell via email, and said that Black is distressed “about the hit that his reputation has taken. He feels like he is the victim of injustice.”
Maich added that Thursday’s ruling is “looking more deeply into the law, and saying ‘is the law constructed in such a way that people’s rights are properly defended?’. And the Supreme Court has said the law was applied improperly – or too broadly – in this case.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court has not thrown it out entirely. The majority ruled that it needs to be extremely limited in its application,” he said.
Black is serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence in Florida on the mail fraud convictions, and an obstruction of justice conviction that is responsible for much of his time in jail. As a result, the length of his sentence is unlikely to change.
