Why is it despicable to be a poor thief yet laudable to be a rich one? If this man had robbed someone of fifty dollars in an alley we would think nothing of tossing him in jail but as his lawyer said, he only stole three million dollars. Not the six million he was convicted of stealing nor the thirty-two million he was charged with stealing. It should be about the crime he's committed. Not who he knows what books he's written or how much money he has in the bank. Neither should it matter that his first fortune was obtained by defrauding two elderly sisters. Celebrity should not be a get out of jail free card no matter what their fawning sycophants think. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

NastyCelt, Calgary, Canada

You may have declined to print my letter. So be it. However, please answer me a couple of questions: At his trial was Conrad Black found to be guilty? On how many charges was he found to be guilty? Now we gloss over his appalling track record of disharmonious corporate and personal greed. We arrive now at the , what I believe to be, the salient point. Is it correct to say that any crime the accused commits carries with the sentence, a warning, a 'pour encourager les autres.' Should this not apply to Conrad Black? I mean, all this carry on about a reduced sentence. Isn't it a bit like saying he was a little bit pregnant?

Venise Alstergren, Melbourne, Victoria 3142, Australia

Avarice and hubris are not criminal offences. Too bad that these qualities seem to have prevented a formidable intellect from being able to contribute in any meaningful way to society. Conrad Black should be punished in a fair and just way for his fraudulent behaviour, but we must control our malicious desires to see him humiliated beyond the scope of his offences or else we diminsh ourselves in the same way that he has .

Illoma Carr, North Hatley, Quebec, Canada

Maybe Bush will bail him out like he did Scooter Libby!! :P

As said, these people look after each other, there's a good chance he wont do any time at all or do 6 months till everyone's forgot about it and let him out early on an appeal of evidence or summit!

Andy, England, UK,

I believe Conrad Black sailed too close to the wind during his business career and I do not condone that. However, he has been victimised beyond belief by the US judicial system.

As for his turncoat former right hand man, Radler - what a pathetic excuse of a human being.

Sorry, but I am a supporter of Conrad Black despite his failings. He is also a brilliant historian. Read any of his books?

David, Stockholm, Sweden

I can live with a reduction in the punishment on the condition that CB's wife is also tried and, if found guilty, subjected to incarceration on the basis of being involved and a beneficiary of the crime and its proceeds.

Maxadolf, Epsom, UK

I am a one time Hollinger shareholder.

The prosecution of Conrad Black was a miscarriage of justice that should have been prevented by his lawyers.

Taking non-compete fees was a perfectly normal aspect of the sale of newspapers, and it was signed off by the non-executive directors of the company. Nothing was hidden.

The real rape of the company was carried out by those whose job it supposedly was to investigate Black's wrongdoing. The payments to them, whether legal or not, were far in excess of the payments Black was being investigated for.

How you can be convicted for obstructing justice for emptying your office when your lease is up is beyond my comprehension. The one area in which Black deserves criticism is in appointing such a poor legal team.

Bill Rees, Exeter,

The debate is whether he should serve 5 years rather than 24-30. There is no question that he should serve none. So where is he? Living the life of Riley in Florida.
Don't kid yourselves he will ever serve time - these people look after each other.

Tim, London,

My problem with the CB case is that there are thousands of CBees and he seems to be singled out.
His crime is as old as the oldest profession and both will always be around.

Of course he is a thief and he should be corrected in some way. I disagree with serving any time in prison. Alternative punishment would be more effective in his case. Cleaning in some building, or working in a shelter for at least 2 years.

robert, vancouver, bc

Oh come on Herbert - the man stole money from the company ! How can that be a miscarriage of justice ? He had a ton of his own money he could have used for his fripperies but chose to use the Company's money instead !
The first duty of those running a public company is to achieve the best results for the shareholders, not plunder the accounts.
He thought he was untouchable, and in the UK he would have been. Be thankful that the American legal system has done what the totally ineffectual UK could not.

Paul Chenery, London,

Wow, imagine in the US having to serve as much as 85% of your sentence - that's barbaric. Thank God for us civilised European countries where the terms of a prison sentence are little more than a random number to be halved, quartered or, my favourite "served concurrently" with another sentence in a kind of one for the price of two for the criminal!

Ciaran Ryan, Bristol, UK

I remain convinced that Conrad Black is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, engineered by an especially unscrupulous prosecutor who appealed to the emotions of an unsophisticated jury.

A similar thing happened to Martha Stewart whose conviction amounted to being punished for failing to confess to something she was not guilty of.

An especially disturbing aspect of Conrad Black's conviction was that his merely retrieving, IN CANADA, some papers that were his own property - and that he did not attempt to destroy or conceal - was held to be a crime UNDER THE LAW OF THE UNITED STATES.

Something is seriously amiss with the American justice system.

Herbert Thornton, Victoria, Canada

Lord Black is a THIEF and because he steals using his signature and in the Boardroom does not mean it is any less destructive than a bank robber with a sub-machine gun blazing away. He should spend years and years in jail so that future "Lord Blacks" do not use their company position to rob.

george lee, london, uk

Without in any way wishing Lord Black ill, the fact is that he is merely experiencing an adverse aspect of the system he was only too eager to take advantage of on the plus side. I don t doubt that during his ascendancy he was enormously supercilious about the misfortunes of other people for which he would have been substantially responsible. He is clearly that type, and remains unrepentantly so. He thus seems unaware of the fact that he would himself have frequently represented that unmentionable 800 lb gorilla to other people.

Henry Percy, London, UK

If Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who worked on the appeal of Claus von Bulow, freeing the British socialite after he(Claus) had been convicted of trying to kill his(Claus's) wife with an overdose of Blanc Mange in a case that earned Jeremy Irons an Oscar recipe in Wolf Gang Puck's new food book, succeeds, then well we may ask:
Either I mistake your shape and making pie quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and devilish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?

Robert Barry, Hamden,