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Recap

Prosecutors in the Conrad Black trial were accused again on Thursday of having made grand accusations against the defendants without any substantial proof to back up their claims.

This time it was Michael Schachter, lawyer for former Hollinger International vice president Peter Atkinson, on the attack. The former prosecutor who secured Martha Stewart’s conviction,Schachter reportedly captivated the jury as he argued against the government’s “baseless accusations” and suggested that federal attorneys were trying to confuse jurors in order “to win regardless of the facts.”

Schachter made the point that during his eight days of testimony, star prosecution witness David Radler did not implicate Atkinson in any criminal act.

"You can read every word of David Radler's testimony on the stand,” he told jurors, brandishing bound transcripts of Radler’s appearance in the trial, “and you will find he never testified that Peter ever did anything wrong.

"There has not been a single witness who testified that Peter lied to them, misled them or deceived them," Schachter argued. "We have looked at 700 documents and not one has showed Peter Atkinson lied, misled or deceived anyone."

Atkinson, Black, Jack Boultbee and Mark Kipnis face an array of fraud charges stemming from payments the men received individually for agreeing not to compete against the buyers of Hollinger newspaper properties.

The government alleges that all the money from the deals should have gone to Hollinger, rather than to the individual executives.

Black is also charged with racketeering and obstruction of justice and is accused of misusing company funds for personal gain.

Schachter urged the jury to consider each defendant’s case individually, reminding them that Atkinson was not implicated in any of the additional crimes with which Black is charged.

During his closing argument, Schachter also attacked prosecution witness Darren Sukonick, a partner at the prestigious Canadian law firm Torys LLP.

Sukonick had testified about his involvement in the $3.2-billion sale of Hollinger’s Canadian newspapers to CanWest Global Communications in 2000, a deal that included non-compete payments to Black, Radler, Atkinson and Boultbee. Prosecutors have taken exception to the inclusion of Atkinson and Boultbee in the deal.

Schachter raised a number of points in Sukonick’s testimony that he claimed were shown by documentary evidence to be false.

The court will sit again Friday, when lawyers for defendant Kipnis will present their closing arguments. The prosecution will then be entitled to a rebuttal and Judge Amy St. Eve will instruct the jury on Tuesday.

Notebook

• The Toronto Sun's Peter Worthington insists his impression of the jurors(they are mesmerized by the defence's closing arguments)is correct and that the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno's impression of the jurors(they are bored to tears)is wrong. "I've yet to see her here," he writes, "but maybe her expectations are higher than mine; they're certainly different."
  
  In Worthington's view Michael Schacter, representing co-defendant Peter Atkinson, carried on the strong closing on Thursday morning. But he acknowledges that the lawyer "felt compelled to garnish his case deep into that afternoon until the one juror couldn't take it any more and pleaded a temporary technical knockout."

• For her part, DiManno obviously pushed the wrong button on the elevator and ended up covering a Chicago mafia trial instead. How very odd.

• The Guardian's Andrew Clark concedes, for the record, that the racketeering charges facing Joey "The Clown" Lombardi, are more serious than those facing Black. Nevertheless, he says, you can't acquit Black simply because the prosecution could produce no victims of Black's crimes. "If Black is guilty, he hurt thousands of shareholders by a tiny measure apiece," he reasons. "As individuals, they wouldn't have noticed their loss."
  
  Then, through what Toronto Life's Douglas Bell calls "elegant sophistry, but sophistry nonetheless," Clark attempts to cast Black as a more nefarious character than Enron's Jeffrey Skilling. This is a reminder, says Bell, "that when it comes to journalistic cruelty, the Brits are best of breed."

• Trial lawyer and analyst Steven Skurka thinks the unified defence strategy put forth in closing arguments is unlikely to yield a mixed bag of convictions and acquittals. "The jury still can find that the fraudulent non-compete scheme was a Radler-Black operation and acquit Boultbee, Atkinson and Kipnas," he writes. "However, the harmonious joint strategy employed by the defense seriously diminishes that prospect."

• In The Globe and Mail, Rick Salutin says if he were Conrad Black - and he isn't - he wouldn't want Eddie Greenspan giving all sorts of interviews about himself. "Personally," he writes, "I prefer lawyers who respond, 'It's not about me.'"

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