Christie also may be avoiding the spotlight because of drama surrounding the unfolding Bridgegate trial, in which senior aides have testified that the governor knew more than he has acknowledged.
"It's like we are watching two different trials," said the Rev. Al Jackson, a pastor in Richmond Heights, a predominantly black community in Miami-Dade County, expressing frustration over the case and how it is unfolding at trial.
With the Bell case trial unfolding, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly declined through a spokesman to discuss the matter.
And then there is Mr. Beason's leading role in the blockbuster public corruption trial unfolding this summer in Montgomery.
No one knows if he will gradually become unaware of the trial unfolding around him, or suddenly burst into a hallucinatory rant.
Though vindicated for now, Mr. Menendez could still be retried by federal prosecutors with a new trial unfolding next year in the midst of a possible re-election campaign, but prosecutors would still have to contend with a landmark Supreme Court decision that makes it harder to prove an elected official engaged in bribery.
The focus of the police brutality trial unfolding in a Brooklyn courtroom shifted Thursday from the disputed events of Oct. 15, 2008, when prosecutors say that a 24-year-old body piercer was abused by an officer in a subway station, to aspects of the investigation that followed.
In 2006, the last year for which data was available, the corresponding percentage in state courts was 94. "In today's criminal justice system," Justice Kennedy wrote, "the negotiation of a plea bargain, rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for a defendant".
The new trial unfolding in D.C. Superior Court this week involves defendants Michael Basillas, Seth Cadman, Anthony Felice and Casey Webber.
But that hasn't stopped the lawyers defending three Toronto cops accused of gang raping a female colleague from trotting out these tired tropes, one by one, in an ugly trial unfolding before the courts right now.
