Let's say you're a pig farmer and you hire a sex trade worker.

While she's in your company, your dark side erupts and you kill her.

That is murder, as I understand the law, and would probably qualify as second-degree murder.

But then you go out and commit five more such murders. You get rid of the bodies by butchering your victims and feeding their remains to your pigs.

At what point does your pattern of behaviour start to become planning and deliberation, thus making you guilty of first-degree murder?

Conrad gets a 6½-year prison sentence, a US$125,000 fine and must pay $6.1 million in restitution.

His first day of imprisonment is scheduled for March 3, 2008. By coincidence, March 3, 1996 would be my first full day of "freedom" from the Leader-Post, after a Hollinger-orchestrated layoff that left 173 Saskatchewan newspaper workers on the street the day before.

All the best on the appeal front, Mr. Black.

Here's the CTV.ca and globeandmail.com stories. Here's some thoughts I had when he was found guilty back in July.

A quick comparison of Black's sentence compared to that of David Radler, another former top Hollinger executive who pleaded guilty in 2005, agreed to co-operate and received a 29-month sentence -- which he can serve in Canada.

Generally speaking, someone serving a Canadian federal prison term gets full parole after serving about 40 per cent of their sentence.

Radler could be out on parole in about a year; less for day parole.

Black will have to serve 85 per cent of his sentence -- or about 5½ years (Radler would have had to serve about two years in the U.S.) before getting full parole.

In Canada, to serve 5½ years before getting parole would be like getting a sentence of 13.75 years.

Hubris has its costs.