Conrad Black on life in the “bondage of the U.S. government”
‘Of course, I was glad, jubilant, to leave’
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In his first dispatch to the media since leaving a Florida prison, Conrad Black describes the more than two years he spent in the “bondage of the U.S. government” as “an interesting experience.” “Of course, I was glad, jubilant, to leave, (though a return is not an impossible result of the pending rehearing),” the former press baron writes of the day of his departure in Saturday’s National Post, “but also grateful for many of the relationships I had formed; enlightened by my observation of American justice on the other side of the wall; and happy to have got on well in an environment very foreign to any I had known before.” But along with the reminiscences of his time behind bars, Black mixes in some damning indictments of U.S. justice. The prison system, Black contends, is home to an “ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead,” many of whom have been “grossly over-sentenced” as a result of “the failure of the U.S. War on Drugs.” And the public defenders paid to represent them, “it is universally and plausibly alleged, are more often than not stooges of the prosecutors.” It’s well worth the read.