Tomorrow morning at around 10:30 Toronto time, Conrad Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour OC, PC, KCSG will for the umpteenth and likely final time stare down the barrel of American Justice. Since his conviction for fraud and obstruction of justice four years ago (in the same Chicago courtroom in which he’ll appear tomorrow, before the same judge), he’s been before the Supreme Court of the United States who at his urging overturned the law that had substantially (though not entirely) undergirded his prosecution in the first place. He’s argued twice before the 7th circuit appellate judge Richard Posner — generally conceded to be the leading intellectual on the American bench — and fought him to a technical draw, the Supreme Court having overturned part of one decision and upheld the other.
Love him or hate him, Conrad Black will not and cannot (and this, more than anything, must gall his enemies and cheer his friends) be ignored. Black has throughout his tenure as a “guest of the American people” continually raised himself up from his low perch as inmate #18330-424 and served notice as to his total innocence, and more’s the point his importance in the affairs of man.
Just last week in a presentation otherwise devoted to geopolitics and economics at Moses Znaimer’s Idea City, Black opined that even having been tried and convicted and finally and forever having exhausted his appeals (a presidential pardon notwithstanding) “the chances of my ever committing a crime are less than zero.” If that isn’t the dictionary definition of Chutzpah I don’t know what is.
On July 13, 2007, as he exited the courtroom a convicted felon, Black led a massive recessional of American British and Canadian reporters like some sort of disgraced Anglican bishop. Not one of those reporters (me among them) thought Conrad Black would ever reemerge as a public figure. At the back of the pack that day Andrew Clark, then the new York correspondent for the Guardian, called to Black’s back amidst the funereal silence: “Lord Black, has justice been served?” There was cheek and not a little malice in the query. Black said not a word in reply but I thought I saw his shoulders hunch as he trudged on. Tomorrow, whether or not he returns for another stint in jail or is released with time served, Black’s answer to that question remains, like it or not, of interest.
