In the absence of a weekend update, here's a weekend footnote:

In my earlier post on the APC payments, I noted that these were the easiest to convict on if the jury were so minded: As the government characterized it, Black, Radler, Atkinson and Boultbee were taking money for agreeing not to compete with Black, Radler, Atkinson and Boultbee. That, in fact, is a false characterization. They were agreeing not to compete with the company in the event that they left it - which they have since done.

However, a well-placed source close to the defence points out that David Radler's position back then and in the sworn testimony he gave at trial is that the money received was an "unallocated portion" of the management fee Hollinger International paid to Ravelston. In effect, Hollinger had already given this money to Ravelston, and it was simply being disbursed among the management on a slightly different basis (and one that was more favourable if they were paying tax in Canada).

It's a small point, but in a case about a "crime" it's not unimportant: The APC non-competes may sound the fishiest but they are, in fact, the least material. There was no "theft" from Hollinger, as Hollinger had paid the money to Ravelston anyway. It's like Maclean's agreeing to pay me $200. It's up to me whether I put it towards my night-school course on How To Write Less Badly, or whether I blow it on coke and hookers. Not sure what 200 bucks gets you in coke and hookers, even in Laval, but you take my point: However I allocate it, the amount paid by Maclean's would have been the same. That's true of the APC transaction.

I wonder if the jury figures that out. One of the curious aspects of this trial was that it was not a paper-trail case, in the way that white-collar fraud usually is. In fact, the government's line was: Forget the paper trail. We're going for a big-picture prosecution. This just smells wrong, even if we can't explain why in legal terms.

I would have preferred a defence fought on similarly epic terrain. Instead, they opted to fight in the thickets, point by point. As on the APC business (which accounts for three of the charges, if memory serves), there's a lot of arcana to keep up to speed on. That may be what's keeping the jury.