Legal Commentary

Conrad Black Freed on $2 Million Bail

By Jeralyn

After serving two years of his sentence, Conrad Black has been freed on $2 million bail.

His attorney Miguel Estrada had said he expected his client to return to his home in Palm Beach.

Is that Miguel Estrada who former President Bush wanted on the U.S. Court of Appeals? Yes.

Black's conviction for honest services fraud was vacated in June following the Supreme Court decision placing limits on the use of the statute. In Black's case, the jury instructions used an improper interpretation of the statute and that the fraud did not involve bribes or kickbacks. [More...]

At Black's trial, the Supreme Court noted, the jury was told Black and his co-defendants were guilty of honest services fraud if they misused their positions for private gain and "knowingly and intentionally" breached their duties of loyalty to the company.

"We hold, in short, that, by properly objecting to the honest-services jury instructions at trial, defendants secured their right to challenge those instructions on appeal," the Supreme Court said, in a decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Black is not totally home free. He still has an obstruction of justice conviction.

Estrada said he would seek to have the obstruction conviction overturned alongside the fraud convictions. The trial jury, Estrada said, would have viewed Black's decision to remove the boxes differently had they concluded he was not guilty of fraud.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 21, 2010 (boomark / email).