Conrad Black didn't do too badly at his sentencing today. He got 6 1/2 years, the bottom of the guidelines, he has to return $6.1 million and pay a $125,000 fine. The Government initially sought a 24 year sentence, but after the Judge rejected its guideline computations and adopted a guideline range of 6 1/2 to 8 years, it dropped its request to 8 years. Still, Black got the bottom of the range. Also,

The judge allowed Black to remain free on bail until March 3, when he is to report to prison. She granted a defense request that he serve his term at a low security facility at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. She rejected U.S. requests to seize Black's Palm Beach, Florida, home or the proceeds of the sale of his Manhattan apartment.

....The judge rejected U.S. efforts to sentence Black under tougher guidelines or to consider the higher fraud amount found by the internal Hollinger investigation.

Turns out, Eglin's closed, so he'll have to go somewhere else.

I wonder if Michael Vick is sorry now that he surrendered on Thanksgiving weekend to start serving his sentence. It doesn't seem like it made a bit of difference. A federal judge today sentenced Vick to 23 months in prison.

Even though Vick pleaded guilty and surrendered early to begin serving his sentence, and the plea agreement (pdf) contemplated a two point "acceptance of responsibility" reduction, the Judge didn't give it to him. Nor does it seem he got a cooperation reduction which the Government said it might request if he provided helpful and truthful information.

The Plea Agreeement also said the prosecutor would ask for a sentence at the low end of the applicable guideline range, but the AP says it asked for a sentence at the high end. Sounds like Government doesn't think Vick held up his end of the bargain.

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A California judge today sentenced Kiefer Sutherland to 48 days in jail on his 4th D.U.I. arrest. It wasn't a surprise, since that's what his plea agreement called for.

He asked to start serving the sentence immediately and will be at the Glendale City Jail.

He must serve all 48 days in jail. Under the terms of his plea, he also must serve 60 months probation, pay a $510 fine, enroll in an 18-month alcohol-education class and attend weekly alcohol-therapy sessions for six months, [Asst. City Attorney]Jeffries said.

On November 27, 2007, embattled fundraiser Norman Hsu was indicted by the feds in New York on fraud charges arising from an alleged $60 million Ponzi scheme.

The 15-count indictment, unsealed today in New York, charges Hsu with wire fraud, mail fraud and violating election laws, alleging he lined up investors by promising high returns on short-term investments and used money from new victims to pay earlier recruits. He also pressured investors to contribute to political candidates he favored, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in a statement.

The indictment was unsealed today. I've posted a copy here.

Jena Six defendant Mychal Bell has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. He will get an 18 month sentence to a juvenile facility and receive credit for time served. He will serve about 8 more months before being released.

Bell's attorneys said they agreed to the plea bargain to spare the former high school football star the danger of being convicted of more serious charges and also to win early release from juvenile custody.

In October, Mauffray sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility for four prior juvenile convictions for battery and destruction of property. But under the terms of Monday's plea agreement, that time will be served concurrently with the new 18-month sentence for the Dec. 4 attack, and Bell will get credit for the nine months he spent in jail while awaiting trial. His attorneys said he could be released by June.

The D.A. is trying to work out plea deals for the remaining defendants.

The disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba was big news a couple of years ago. Obsessive media coverage provoked reasonable complaints about distorted priorities and poor judgment in television news departments. Has the public's interest been sated, or will new arrests of old suspects trigger another round of 24 hour Natalee Holloway coverage?

Michael Vick doesn't face sentencing for his dog-fighting case until December 10. But he decided to start serving the sentence today.

I'm not getting this. Why would he want to serve three weeks in a county jail instead of a federal prison camp? Why does he want to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas in prison? He would likely have gotten a voluntary surrender to the designated institution on December 10, putting the start of his sentence off until January. I don't think it will have a major impact on the sentencing judge, and he's still facing state felony charges.

Maybe he's feeling like he's just wasting time while waiting and would rather get out sooner, even if just by three weeks.

Or could the reason be financial...to make it harder for him to be personally served with lawsuits?

Financial troubles have further sullied Vick's image: He's being sued for more than $4 million by banks claiming he defaulted on loans and might have to repay nearly $20 million in NFL signing bonus money.

Las Vegas criminal defense lawyer David Chesnoff is everywhere these days.

Two weeks ago, he got a good result for Darren Mack, charged with killing his wife and shooting a judge (life with parole after 20 years rather than life without parole which is what he would have gotten if the jury didn't buy Mack's insanity defense.)

He's representing David Copperfield in the alleged sex assault investigation stemming from an incident in the Bahamas, which he calls a "smear campaign." Last week he got deportation proceedings halted against an Iranian World Poker player.

And now, he's gotten boxer Mike Tyson a sentence of 24 hours in jail on a felony cocaine possession and DUI charge even though the prosecutor asked for a year in jail. Tyson's success in rehab convinced the judge not to hammer him. Nice job, David.

It's the cover-up that always gets them. Baseball giant Barry Bonds was indicted yesterday on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice.

In the indictment, federal prosecutors said Bonds lied when he denied (to the grand jury)using a long list of banned drugs, including steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone and "the clear," the undetectable designer steroid marketed by BALCO.

....Bonds also lied when he testified that his longtime personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had never injected him with drugs, the government contended. The trainer, who was imprisoned for contempt of court after he refused to testify against Bonds, was freed Thursday night, hours after Bonds' indictment was unsealed.

Interestingly, Anderson never flipped. He did three months on his own steroid-related case and a year on the contempt charge for refusing to give up Bonds. Because the grand jury concluded and there was no longer any need for him to testify, the Judge let him out.

Bonds has grown a bit since he entered baseball. [More...]

I'm aware of felony murder laws, in which one participant in, say a bank robbery, is held liable for murder if another participant kills someone during the course of the crime or the getaway, but this California case is going a step further.

LAKEPORT, Calif. - Three young black men break into a white man's home in rural Northern California. The homeowner shoots two of them to death - but it's the surviving black man who is charged with murder.

In a case that has brought cries of racism from civil rights groups, Renato Hughes Jr., 22, was charged by prosecutors in this overwhelmingly white county under a rarely invoked legal doctrine that could make him responsible for the bloodshed.

The murder charge is based on California's Provocative Act doctrine --

The Provocative Act doctrine does not require prosecutors to prove the accused intended to kill. Instead, "they have to show that it was reasonably foreseeable that the criminal enterprise could trigger a fatal response from the homeowner," said Brian Getz, a San Francisco defense attorney unconnected to the case.

The doctrine is used so rarely the NAACP is alleging the charges are racially motivated. It's also are asking why the homeowner wasn't charged with murder.

More....

Larry Ray, who figures prominently in the Bernie Kerik indictment, has an interesting history.

Here he is with Rudy Giuliani and Mikhail Gorbachev in a photo taken on December 19 or 20, 1997 that was hanging in Bernie's office. The official mayoral picture in the archives (minus Ray) is here.

Ray was providing security for Gorbachev. Gorbachev was in town promoting a Pizza Hut commerical he had made to make money for his Gorbachev foundation. (Pizza Hut was really big in Russia back then.) I've inserted who's who into a larger version of the photo here.

Here's a picture of Bernie and Ray.

Ray was best man at Bernie's wedding on November 1, 1998. Donna Hanover, Rudy's then wife, attended the wedding but Rudy didn't. Why not?

More...

The motive is tragic:

A personal assistant was charged yesterday with using a piece of exercise equipment to fatally bludgeon her boss, Linda Stein, the former punk-rock manager turned real estate broker, in her Fifth Avenue penthouse, the authorities said. The assistant, Natavia S. Lowery, 26, of Brooklyn, said she was driven to violence by the victim herself, who, she said, treated her poorly, “just kept yelling at her” and even made her ill by blowing marijuana smoke in her face, officials said. Finally, Ms. Lowery told detectives, she bashed Ms. Stein six or seven times in the back of the head on Oct. 30 with what she called a yoga stick after Ms. Stein, 62, made a racially demeaning remark, other law enforcement officials said.

I will leave it to the criminal lawyers to explain the legal ramifications. For me, I am struck by the senselessness of it all. I guess quitting was not an option.