Conrad Black responds to an article in
The Economist:
You included me in a gallery of apparently larcenous peers in Britain’s House of Lords (“The rotters’ club”,
August 1st). The article’s graphic suggests that
America’s
criminal-justice system accords an accused what a citizen of Britain
would consider due process. It does not. In the United States
prosecutors win virtually all of their cases, nearly all of them without
a trial, so severe is the distortion of the plea-bargain system in
which inculpatory testimony is extorted from witnesses in exchange for
immunity, including from charges of perjury.
I also believe I am ineligible for membership of your rotters’ club,
because every count 
against me was abandoned, rejected by jurors, or
vacated by America’s Supreme Court. Two spurious counts were
self-servingly retrieved by a lower court that the Supreme Court had
criticised and which had sent the two charges back to the lower court to
assess its errors. The whole prosecution was nonsense and I achieved by
far the largest libel settlement in Canadian history from my original
accusers.
I would be happy to have the question of whether I am a rotter
determined in a cursory review by an impartial ethics committee of Their
Lordships’ House.
CONRAD (LORD) BLACK
Toronto
Blast from the Past:
Conrad Black Gives Us
a Lesson on How a Conservative Should Interact with the MSM
