These instructions are making it very difficult if not impossible for defendants to prevail in these types of cases.

You need to get there early...I suggest you wait a week or so, the interest will fade and you should be able to attend. I appreciate your interest in our nation's justice system.

I do that all the time, and it's not just something I'm making up.

And Lay had better not think he has it any easier. At the end of the day you go into a case like this as a defendant six feet under, and you have to continually claw your way out of that hole.

The government has an arsenal of pressure points. Individually, he might have tried each of these cases, but the culmination of looking at multiple trials is burdensome for any defendant. The government only has to win one.

You don't hit a home run with a witness who has admittedly lied for years but all of a sudden, because he has a get-out-of jail-free card, has changed his mind. If the prosecution thinks it hit a home run they're not going to last the full nine innings.