Whoa!
The jury in the criminal trial in Chicago for the former chairman of Hollinger International, Conrad Black, and his collegial fellow executives, will be hard put not to find the defendants guilty as charged. Their excessive self-entitlements in tailoring not-quite-licit pay-backs to their personal accounts, along with the life-style pay-back of personal self-aggrandizement is guaranteed not to endear them to the jury comprised of ordinary Americans.
Certainly not a jury representing Lord Black's peers, for his lifestyle and values would have nothing at all in common with that which the jurors experience in their daily lives. One could argue, as a principle, that no one can be found guilty of criminal wrong-doing merely on the evidence of overweening pride, total lack of personal accountability - simply because that ego insists it is accountable to no one.
All the evidence brought against Conrad Black which he and his lawyers attempted so spectacularly unsuccessfully to suppress - going back to his attempts to spirit cartons full of incriminating evidence away from his office, and being forced later to return them - are presenting a damning picture of a particular type of hubris. No entitlement was ever seen by Lord Black to be too extreme.
It was as though he was incapable of envisioning any company that he was involved with having to answer to any authority beside his own. His personal identification with the fortunes of his business enterprises, his much-vaunted past business dealings, his financial successes and his lush remunerations all conspired to encourage his behaviour of egregious self-entitlement.
And he is his own worst enemy. He simply can not and will not understand that he has flaunted his position of trust and in so doing flouted the law, short-changing company share-holders in his greed for personal possessions and his desire to be catered to as the most powerful, most socially elevated and intellectually stirring personage of his era.
The contempt in which he holds underlings, the casual dismissal of the great unwashed, the flippant irritation he feels at interference in his place in the grand scheme of things cannot help but diminish his chances for acquittal even as the jury members are exposed to one incident after another of legally unsupported glad-handing of shareholders' rightful profits.
He is so utterly egotistical that no gentle persuasion on the part of his lawyers, his worried co-conspirators can persuade the man to err on the side of caution and say nothing. He incriminates himself as an arrogant and irrepressible self-promoter with every word that issues from his hapless mouth. He derides the witnesses who have given testimony against him, he jabs at the prosecutors' case, and he posits the confident view that no jury will convict him on the evidence so far given.
Amazing, truly amazing.
Certainly not a jury representing Lord Black's peers, for his lifestyle and values would have nothing at all in common with that which the jurors experience in their daily lives. One could argue, as a principle, that no one can be found guilty of criminal wrong-doing merely on the evidence of overweening pride, total lack of personal accountability - simply because that ego insists it is accountable to no one.
All the evidence brought against Conrad Black which he and his lawyers attempted so spectacularly unsuccessfully to suppress - going back to his attempts to spirit cartons full of incriminating evidence away from his office, and being forced later to return them - are presenting a damning picture of a particular type of hubris. No entitlement was ever seen by Lord Black to be too extreme.
It was as though he was incapable of envisioning any company that he was involved with having to answer to any authority beside his own. His personal identification with the fortunes of his business enterprises, his much-vaunted past business dealings, his financial successes and his lush remunerations all conspired to encourage his behaviour of egregious self-entitlement.
And he is his own worst enemy. He simply can not and will not understand that he has flaunted his position of trust and in so doing flouted the law, short-changing company share-holders in his greed for personal possessions and his desire to be catered to as the most powerful, most socially elevated and intellectually stirring personage of his era.
The contempt in which he holds underlings, the casual dismissal of the great unwashed, the flippant irritation he feels at interference in his place in the grand scheme of things cannot help but diminish his chances for acquittal even as the jury members are exposed to one incident after another of legally unsupported glad-handing of shareholders' rightful profits.
He is so utterly egotistical that no gentle persuasion on the part of his lawyers, his worried co-conspirators can persuade the man to err on the side of caution and say nothing. He incriminates himself as an arrogant and irrepressible self-promoter with every word that issues from his hapless mouth. He derides the witnesses who have given testimony against him, he jabs at the prosecutors' case, and he posits the confident view that no jury will convict him on the evidence so far given.
Amazing, truly amazing.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Life's Like That
posted by Pieface | 6:39 PM
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