Lord Black Enters His Second Not Guilty Plea This Month

Lord Conrad Black entered a not guilty plea to the superseding indictment that added RICO, obstruction of justice, wire fraud, and money laundering charges to the list of mail/wire fraud charges already in place alleging the diversion of assets from Hollinger International. A RICO charge is relatively rare in white collar cases, at least when the conduct does not involve la arge-scale fraud, such as a ponzi scheme.  Black's attorney assailed the new charges as a "blatant example of overreaching" -- but then, aren't they all?  The district judge set a tentative trial date of March 5, 2007, which seems like a long time but prosecutors claim to have given the defense CD-ROMs with over 1.3 million pages of documents, with another 500,000 pages to come.  Nothing like the deluge approach to discovery. An AP story (here) discusses the case. (ph)