After serving more than 28 months in a Florida prison for his 6 ½-year sentence, Inmate No. 18330-424 will soon be seeing the light of day.

But it won’t be as he remembered. After all, this isn’t your average prisoner. It’s Conrad Black, the former media baron and man about town who once owned property in three different countries, with a company jet for ease of transportation.

On Monday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago granted Black bail, though his lawyer says he has not yet been released and the conditions of bail are yet to be determined by a judge.

“We are extremely pleased the Court of Appeals rejected the government’s argument that our unanimous Supreme Court victory meant nothing,” Miguel Estrada, Black’s lawyer, said in a statement. “According to the Court of Appeals, the trial judge must now set the bail terms. I am trying to get on the judge’s calendar so we can finalize the details and get Lord Black out as soon as possible.”

But where will Lord Black go?

Gone is his Palm Beach mansion in Florida.

Richard Siklos, author of Shades of Black, wondered whether Black may be able to stay in the Palm Beach retreat through a deal with the investment firm that now owns the property.

“He definitely seems to have lost ownership,” he said. “I’m guessing he wouldn’t want to be in Florida having been confined there. I can’t entirely imagine why he’d go back to New York either.”

His Park Avenue pad, an apartment that was the site of soirees with New York’s elite, sold in June 2005 for $10.5 million U.S., with most of the proceeds forfeited to U.S. authorities.

His four-storey London mansion is also gone, sold for $13.1 million pounds ($25 million U.S.) in 2005.

Siklos said Black probably wants to return to the only home that remains in his once large stable of property: the heavily mortgaged Bridle Path mansion he inherited from his family in the 70s, right here in Toronto.

Siklos acknowledged it would be unusual if authorities allowed Black to leave the U.S. Another complication is the fact that Black gave up his Canadian citizenship in order to become a member of the British House of Lords.

Richard Powers, associate dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, said Black has been a model prisoner, so the conditions of his bail will likely be fairly lenient. He probably won’t be considered a flight risk but will likely be monitored and asked to surrender his passport, said Powers.

“It is not like he is getting off scot-free,” he said.

Terms of Black’s bail will be set by Chicago Judge Amy St. Eve, who presided over the criminal trial. That will happen as soon as Black and his lawyer can make a court appearance.

The decision comes after a legal victory for Black in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to set aside Black’s three mail fraud convictions.

The Supreme Court ruled that a law used to help convict Black on three counts of mail fraud was too broad. The justices in the case unanimously agreed to narrow the definition of “honest services” fraud, which was previously applied to a person within a company or official office who misused their position to benefit from a bribe, kickback or undisclosed conflict of interest. The narrowed or clarified definition includes only bribes and kickbacks.

The ruling didn’t exonerate Black, but allowed him to continue to argue against his convictions in a lower court.

Black’s lawyers subsequently filed for bail in Chicago on July 6.

Powers said if the three fraud charges are thrown out, he expects Black’s lawyers will argue the time Black has spent in prison should be considered time served toward the remaining obstruction charge. Powers said he didn’t think it was beyond the realm of possibility that the court could decide Black had served his time.

“Where his actions would fall on the scale of minor obstruction to a more serious obstruction is open to debate. It may actually be time served in which case he may be out sooner that we think,” said Powers. “He could be home for (America) Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

Eric Sussman, former lead prosecutor in the Black trial, said he was surprised by Monday’s decision.

“But quite frankly, I’ve been surprised quite frequently in this case,” Sussman said in an email.

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At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month, Sussman called the prospect of bail “extremely unlikely.”

Ronald Safer, managing partner at Schiff Hardin LLP in Chicago, said the decision is not unprecedented but is certainly not common.

“The seventh circuit now has to decide whether the error that was made was harmless,” said Safer, who represented Hollinger’s in-house lawyer Mark Kipnis, who was convicted alongside Black. “As tea leaves go these are very positive tea leaves.”

Safer said he expects the decision will have an impact on Black’s overall sentence, the majority of which he is serving for obstruction of justice.

He said Black could be transported to Chicago to appear in court sometime within the next two weeks.

But if Black’s looking to rent an apartment there, he might need to borrow some cash.

“I don’t know what his personal financial situation is, but if he lost his Florida home, you can infer he has liquidity issues,” Siklos said.

Black is also being sued for $71 million (U.S.) in back taxes by the Internal Revenue Service, which alleges he failed to report $120 million in U.S. income during the period 1998 to 2003.

Black, 65, was convicted in 2007 of illegally siphoning $6 million out of the Hollinger International newspaper empire under the pretense it was a so-called noncompete payment from buyers of the company’s assets. He was also convicted of obstructing justice by spiriting boxes of documents out of his Toronto offices to keep them out of the hands of investigators.

Prior to the fraud investigations, Black controlled Hollinger International and owned a number of major newspapers including the Daily Telegraph in the U.K., the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and the National Post.

As for the future, author and journalist Peter C. Newman said “having commented freely on Conrad Black’s conviction, we must now treat his successful bid for freedom with equal respect.”

“I believe he leaves his American jail as a better man, with a higher appreciation for Canada.”

Black has been serving his 6 ½-year sentence at Coleman federal prison in Florida since March 2008.

With files from The Canadian Press

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