PING!
Posted on 03/31/2007 9:04:14 AM PDT by GMMAC
Class war masquerading as law
George Jonas, National Post
Published: Saturday, March 31, 2007
The idea that I'd ever agree with Naomi Klein about anything would have struck me as bizarre until a few days ago. Then I saw an observation she made in The Guardian. "There is no doubt," the poster girl of Canada's left wrote about the trial of Conrad Black and three codefendants in Chicago, "that what is going on in that courtroom looks less like a fraud trial than class war."
Indeed. Now Ms. Klein may regard this as a good thing. I regard it as a bad thing, but never mind. The main thing is we agree: Lord Black's trial in Chicago is less like a fraud trial than a war -- and, as the Romans noted, inter arma silent leges: In times of war the laws are silent.
Whether class war, culture war or a combination, the drama unfolding in Judge Amy St. Eve's court is closer to an exercise in politics than to one in law. Ms. Klein accurately intuits that in U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's Northern District of Illinois, the prosecution, having asserted thievery but lacking evidence, is pinning its hope on the jury's potential envy and malice toward the rich -- in her own words, that "even if the way they amassed their fortunes was legal, it shouldn't have been."
Except, of course, this is a question for legislators. It isn't -- or shouldn't be--a question for juries.
The trial judge has taken great pains to warn potential jurors that jet-setting isn't illegal and they must not hold a man's millions against him. This satisfies the formal requirements of fairness, but reminds one of the classic tale of Nasrudin Hoja in which the Oriental mischief maker warns the Sultan's assembled courtiers that, no matter what, they must never --never!-- think of a big baboon with its huge red behind. It's not hard to guess what happens next.
Ms. Klein may regard envy as a salutary emotion paving the way to social justice. I view it as a mortal sin, leading to injustice, misery and ultimately perdition. But let's leave that aside. The point is, Ms. Klein sees the trial of Lord Black and his co-defendants as something different from an ordinary criminal trial to be decided on the evidence. She sees it as a show trial, conducted as part of a class or culture war, in which the battle lines are drawn up on the basis of kinship and shared interest. Show trials come in all shapes and sizes, but they all begin by removing Justitia's blindfold and letting the goddess of justice take a peek at who is them and who is us.
This explains what might otherwise be a puzzle: why the Chicago prosecutors are making such an effort to convict Lord Black of literacy, which may not be a crime even in Illinois, and which the recidivist biographer of Maurice Duplessis, F. D. Roosevelt and, most recently, Richard Nixon, might freely admit to anyway. Or the even bigger puzzle of lawyers on both sides pretending -- at least, one hopes only pretending -- to be unfamiliar with ordinary English words, to retain the sympathy of what they, rightly or wrongly, take to be an illiterate jury.
Not only illiterate, but envious, petty and resentful of anyone with a fatter wallet, slimmer body and greater vocabulary than themselves. These are the prejudices that most jurors seem to entertain, in the estimation of most lawyers. It explains such courtroom strategies as the lead prosecutor, Eric Sussman, pretending to be stymied by the word "calumny" while reading from one of Lord Black's e-mails. "Anybody who uses such fancy words is up to no good, folks," the prosecutor implies in the courtroom psychodrama. The defence's Eddie Genson parries the cunning thrust by pretending to be unable to make head or tail of the word himself, and passing the ball to the defendant, who then pronounces "calumny" with ease, thereby proving that despite his erudition he is a helpful, benign sort of chap.
The theatre -- or the prejudice -- isn't new. As Somerset Maugham put it three generations ago, an Englishman who speaks French too well must be either a diplomat or a card sharp. The Chicago prosecutor, lacking any other evidence, is trying to prove Lord Black a card sharp for speaking English too well.
Anything is fair, I suppose, in love and class warfare.
It's possible, of course, that the journalist Mark Steyn is right and Mr. Sussman somehow managed to go through law school without learning how to decipher and pronounce a common synonym for "slander." One should never underestimate people; there are naturals in illiteracy as well as in acting, and Mr. Sussman may be one. In which case we have the irony of a fine contemporary historian, Lord Black, being prosecuted in Chicago by a man who is baffled every time Laurence Olivier appears on late night TV in the classic movie Hamlet, saying: "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go."
Class warfare. The mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse. A rat or two is still to come.
© National Post 2007
PING!
I am confused, what are the charges?
I'd been thinking this trial was taking place in Canada. It's a shock to see it's an American thing.
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