SUPREME COURT TO HEAR CONRAD BLACK APPEAL

FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

REPRINTED AS FAIR USE

Conrad Black's anti-fraud case

will go to Supreme Court

Justices have agreed to hear an appeal by the former newspaper executive, who says he was wrongly convicted of failing to provide 'honest services.'

By David G. Savage

Reporting from Washington -- The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would hear an appeal from jailed newspaper executive Conrad Black, who contends he was wrongly convicted under a broadly worded anti-fraud law that makes it a crime to deprive someone of "honest services."

Black, a Canadian-born historian and media magnate, was prosecuted in Chicago for allegedly skimming more than $5.5 million from Hollinger International and the Chicago Sun-Times to finance a lavish lifestyle.

Black said the money was a "management fee," but prosecutors said it had not been approved by Hollinger's board.

A jury convicted him in 2007 on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice, and he was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison in central Florida.

In his appeal on Black's behalf, Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada pointed out that his client had been acquitted of charges that he treated his company as his "personal piggy bank," but was convicted of fraud on the grounds that he deprived the company and its shareholders of his "honest services."

Estrada said this "vaguely worded criminal prohibition" allows prosecutors to charge corporate executives and public officials with crimes, even without proving they wrongly took money for themselves.

"This was not fraud in the old-fashioned sense of the term. If the court agrees, he would be at least entitled to a new trial," Estrada said.

Congress expanded the anti-fraud law in 1988 to combat public corruption. Usually, a fraud involves a scheme to deprive someone of their money or property, but the expanded law said it was a fraud to "deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."

The law is aimed at officials who engage in kickback schemes to benefit themselves or their friends. In recent years, this law has been a favorite tool of prosecutors because it permits prosecutions for questionable schemes that do not necessarily result in a loss to the government or a business.

Last year, Robert Sorich, an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and two other former city officials who were convicted in a patronage hiring scheme raised the same issue in an appeal to the high court. Their appeals were turned away earlier this year, but Justice Antonin Scalia dissented and said the court should act to clarify the law.

Estrada cited Scalia's dissent in his appeal. Last month, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan urged the court to reject the appeal. Black and his codefendants "had abused their positions with Hollinger to line their pockets with phony management fees," she said.

But on Monday, the court issued a one-line order saying it had agreed to hear the case of Conrad Black vs. the United States during the fall.

If the court were to rule for Black and broadly reject the notion of "honest services" fraud, it could allow persons who have already been convicted under this law to file a writ of habeas corpus to reopen their cases.