Letters of support not sealed in Conrad Black case

In the four days since former Rep. Nathan Cooper, R-Cape Girardeau, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for immigration fraud I have written about the decision made by Judge Jean C. Hamilton to seal 32 letters of support written by people favoring leniency for Cooper.
Apparently, those letters did their job since federal prosecutors were recommending that Cooper be sentenced to twice as much prison time than he receieved.
Who wrote those letters and why did they hold such sway over the judge? Or is this just a case of a judge automatically sealing documents that should be open to the public without giving it a second thought.

Other judges would not dream of sealing letters of this sort. A case in point is the recent sentencing of former Hollinger International CEO Conrad Black on federal fraud charges. One of those who wrote a letter asking for leniency for Black, who looted his company of millions, was syndicated columnist George Will, according to a column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

So when I read that Will wrote a letter to Judge Amy St. Eve in support of Conrad Black, I almost choked on my Cheerios.

Black is a convicted thief, albeit one who lives in mansions and rides in a Rolls. In July, a Chicago jury convicted him of stealing $2.9 million from the Sun-Times' parent company, then called Hollinger International. The jury also found him guilty of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors pegged Black's thievery even higher, alleging he stole $32 million. And a Hollinger-financed investigation concluded Black and his top lieutenant stole more than $400 million from the company.

Perhaps Will should ask shareholders at Cardinal Capital and Tweedy Browne --whose money the mogul was convicted of stealing -- if Black adhered to the rules of the free market.

In his letter to St. Eve, Will apparently asked the judge to show leniency in sentencing Black. Other luminaries, including Elton John and a former prime minister of Canada, made similar pleas.

Leniency? Wait a minute, George. I thought being soft on crime was a bad thing.

"The subjects of crime and punishment instructively demarcate differences between liberals and conservatives," Will wrote in 1998. "Liberals are disposed to favor punishment only when it is drained of retributive elements and when it is justified as therapeutic for the offender and society."

Last year, Will wrote a column bashing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for being soft on crime. Last month, he tut-tutted about a "flurry of indictments" among plaintiffs' lawyers and then pointed out Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' connection to these crooks.

Now, I believe in loyalty. Not being a particularly virtuous person anyway, I'm willing to commit sins for its sake. And I understand that Will and Black are friends, having met on a 1989 trip to Warsaw.

Their connection deepened, by the way. Will served on a Hollinger board of advisers during the Black years, drawing an annual payment of $25,000. On March 6, 2003, Will wrote a column extolling Black without disclosing the payments. The column ran in the Sun-Times.

The letter on Black's behalf wouldn't seem so outrageous if Will hadn't built his entire operation, so to speak, on sanctimonious moralizing.

The Cooper case cries for the names of these people to be named. Are those signing the letters the same ones who are pushing for stricter laws to battle illegal immigrants in Missouri...a problem that was not helped by Cooper's illegal activities? Are these people who have been involved in the scandal surrounding the awarding of license fee offices?

The judge should allow those letters to be placed in the public record, and our U. S. Attorney for Missouri, Catherine Hanaway, should be leading the charge to see that it happens.