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We find out who our friends are when we ask them to write appeals for clemency to a judge deciding our fate in a U.S. court - as former Hollinger executive and lawyer Peter Atkinson has discovered. And, in a submission to Judge Amy St. Eve last week, Mr. Atkinson's legal team offered a collection of 23 letters of heartfelt support from family members, including a brother who is a pastor with the Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church, fellow Canadian lawyers (Mr. Atkinson was a litigator at Toronto firm Aird & Berlis before joining Hollinger), academic friends of Mr. Atkinson's wife Stephanie, and well-known Canadian business types. A number of friends use similar terms to describe Mr. Atkinson - who was convicted of fraud in a U.S. court earlier this year and is to be sentenced next week - including "integrity," "decency" and "his word is his bond." There is also a consistent theme of disbelief that he could commit a crime.
The letters are intended to give the judge background information and character assessments ahead of her sentencing.
Most affecting of all the letters is that of his wife, Stephanie Atkinson, a pediatric nutritionist who has been married to him for 36 years. "I was not prepared for the 'death' of my beloved husband, while still living and breathing beside me. The 'living death' we have endured since Peter was charged ... entails being cocooned in a suspended state of bewilderment, anger, fear, anxiety almost to a loss of consciousness, and sadly a loss of faith."
She continues, "We have navigated the abyss for a long time. I dread falling into this abyss if incarceration is part of Peter's sentence. ... Our anguish and that of Peter's family has been unimaginable. No one not in this position could fathom the extent of the erosion of our lives."
Luminaries such as lawyers Fred Cass, a partner with Aird & Berlis, Cliff Lax, and Earl Cherniak of Lerners contribute strong sentiments.
"I can think of no one among my colleagues at the bar I would have considered less likely to have been caught up in the trouble that Peter now finds himself in," Mr. Cherniak wrote in his letter to Judge St. Eve.
Mr. Lax, a partner with the firm Lax O'Sullivan Scott in Toronto, hit some buttons with references to Mr. Atkinson's legal achievements before going on to say: "I must point out that the esteem in which Peter was held by members of the bar and bench in this province, continues to the present day. ... He is one of the rare individuals about whom not a bad word is ever spoken."
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