The release of Conrad Black from prison and his return to his home at Canada is wonderful news, long awaited by his wide and diverse circle of friends. The one-time press baron, who had been a founding director of The New York Sun, was released Friday from a federal prison at Miami and whisked to a waiting jet. He had completed his full sentence, but because he is a felon in the eyes of American law and a non-citizen, he wasn’t permitted to stay here. So upon his release from prison, he was flown to Toronto. Let us just say it is America’s loss.

We’ve already reprised here — and in the Wall Street Journal — the cataract of baseless charges up under which Conrad Black has stood. He’d been accused by a committee of stealing more than $400 million and running a “corporate kleptocracy.” By the time it got to trial, that number was but $60 million. A jury acquitted him of almost all of that, of all of the most serious charges. It convicted him on four counts, three of fraud and one of obstruction. When Conrad Black appealed on the grounds that the jury could have relied on a law — the so-called honest services statute — that was unconstitutional, he was mocked by the prosecutors and the appeals judges.

It took the Supreme Court to end the mockery. The Nine decided that in the case of the three fraud counts on which Conrad Black had been convicted at trial, the instructions to the jury had been “incorrect.” Honest services law was, in fact, unconstitutional. The court was unanimous, right left and center. It ordered the Seventh Circuit to take a second look. The Seventh Circuit dismissed two of the three fraud counts. Only to truculence can one lay the fact that the circuit panel left one fraud count in place. It’s a decision that serves no purpose other than to remind the world that sometimes the Seventh Circuit, as was famously said of the Law Itself, is an ass.

As this became clear to an ever-widening circle, a string of dignitaries and admirers made the trek to visit Conrad Black in prison. A former prime minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, was among them, as was a former state secretary of America, Henry Kissinger. Also came lowly scriveners who had once the honor to labor in Black’s newsrooms. Meantime, the prosecutors who haven’t already left government service no doubt will do so eventually. When they try to make a boast of their attack on Conrad Black, people will look away. The fact is that for all the wounds they delivered to him, he bested them. He went back to Canada with his honor intact.

We are not so close to Conrad Black that we know how he will make his comeback. He’s already begun that as a writer. During the course of his travail he’s produced masterful biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. He’s written “A Matter of Principle” about his case. He’s also written an a strategic history of America. It would not be surprising, reading his columns, were he to write for the reform of the American system of justice, including the scandal of plea-bargaining. We’ve long argued that he’s the right man for a new biography of DeGaulle. Or Adenauer. Or both. Maybe he will rebuild an empire of news. Or pursue some other line to harness his enormous talents. The one thing that seems certain is that America won’t get to be his base.

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This is a moment for America to reflect on its loss. Its most boastful prosecutor pursued a newspaper baron who had come to its shores to build one of the greatest newspaper combinations in history. The case was rejected by either the jury or the Supreme Court. But in an age when the newspaper business is focused on format and the technology of distribution, we lost from our shores one of the press barons of substance, a proprietor of whom it could be said that he improved the newspapers he acquired. Conrad Black’s empire was delivered by the American legal system into the hands of those who didn’t know what to do with it and sold part of it and ruined the rest. His crown jewel, the London Daily Telegraph had, we once remarked, stood off the coast of Europe like a great fleet in defense of America, of Israel, of England, and of democracy. Its voice is subdued now, even as the French elections remind us how quickly Europe can totter. These columns have often said that history has a way of playing tricks, and one of them will be a time when America will miss Conrad Black.