Guilty until proven innocent?

Onetime international newspaper tycoon Conrad Black, a native Torontonian, has been pretty well ruined by American security regulators and prosecutors without ever being brought to trial. He also suffers steady vilification by the Canadian press. Last week there appeared a signal exception to this trend, however, with a distinguished Canadian academic vigorously portraying Black as a victim of grotesque injustice.

This lone defender was Ian Hunter, emeritus law professor at the University of Western Ontario, much published newspaper columnist, and sometime author and popular historian, who startled his readers by baldly asserting: "Conrad Black is innocent."

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"No, I have never met him," declared Hunter. "No, I have made no examination of the evidence against him. Nor do I need to, in order to assert his innocence." Under British, Canadian and American law, he emphasized, a man is innocent until he is proven guilty, and no evidence whatever has been brought against Black in a court of law. He is innocent until proven otherwise.

Meanwhile, his prosecutors endlessly parade Lord Black's lavish lifestyle before the public – but lavish living is not a crime. (In others, it is often depicted as admirable.) Black's business practices may, or may not, have been questionable – but questionable is not a crime either.

So Black is innocent under the law, and Hunter thought it high time somebody pointed this out. Two further injustices, however, also impelled him to defend Lord Black.

One is the conduct of Black's American prosecutors. Every time they come up with a new piece of evidence, they call a press conference to present it publicly. And often a new charge accompanies this extravaganza, but the supposedly new case is generally the old one brought forward under a new name. The prosecutors are, in effect, trying the case in the media.

Hunter himself was once a Crown prosecutor, the rough equivalent of an American assistant D.A. "I learned a simple lesson," he wrote. "A prosecutor's conduct is usually a reliable barometer. A strong prosecution case is usually conducted even-handedly and with restraint." In the Black case, "this is exactly the opposite of the prosecutorial grandstanding we have seen to date. Instead, admittedly from afar, we see a vindictive campaign of character assassination, vilification, asset seizure, etc. Lord Black's assets have been frozen; his liberties have been restricted; he has been lectured at by judges – all before any criminal wrong-doing has been proved against him."

For Hunter, the last straw came with the release of a current book by Tom Bower: "Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge." Hunter calls the book "a drive-by smear that will repel any fair-minded reader." Its source, he implies, was Black's American prosecutors, whose actions betray their fear that their case may evaporate as soon as it comes before a judge.

Why, he wonders, haven't Canadians come to Black's defense? If anything, his treatment by the Toronto media has been more vicious than his treatment by the American prosecutors. The fact that Black is intelligent, outspoken and wealthy (or he was before he was financially destroyed by his prosecutors) may tell against him in Canada.

Indeed, though Hunter didn't touch on this aspect of the situation, Black's wife, columnist Barbara Amiel, has fared even worse. She was one of a half-dozen aggressive, career-centered women journalists in Toronto. When she married Black she left her colleagues, so to speak, in the dust. Now, besides being brainy and beautiful, she was a rich socialite. It was too much for some of her female associates. After her husband's downfall, they fell upon her tooth and claw, tearing her to pieces in column after column. A sordid exhibition.

All in all, however, I don't think that jealousy alone explains Toronto's contempt for Lord Black. He is seen as treasonous, in fact, for not buying into the New Canada created by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1960s. He was consciously and articulately contemptuous of it, and (unlike most newspaper tycoons) is a better writer than most of the people he hires.

When wealthy Toronto abandoned Christianity, Black joined it; he became a Catholic. He also took over the venerable Southam chain of newspapers and fired many of its soft-lefty editors. He launched the National Post in direct competition with the Globe and Mail, bible of Canadian liberaldom.

All of this effectually lifted one huge middle finger in the face of the Toronto-centered English-Canadian establishment. So how delicious for them to see him ruined – and without even the bother of a trial!