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- NATION, Page 25American NotesNEW YORK CITYImelda's Day In Court
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- The prosecution insists that she was in on the plot to use
- a fortune in bribes and plunder to buy a piece of Manhattan
- worth more than $160 million. Her lawyers paint a different
- Imelda Marcos. The First Lady of the Philippines, they say, was
- a woman innocently cooling her thousands of pairs of heels as
- the machinations of Malacanang Palace buzzed around her.
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- Jury selection for her trial on racketeering and other
- charges carrying up to 50 years in prison started last week in
- the same courtroom that saw the bravura performances of Leona
- Helmsley and Bess Myerson. For sheer Wagnerian greed, the tale
- of Imelda could put the Hotel Queen to shame. Jurors will have
- to decide whether a wife always knows what her husband is up
- to -- in this case, deposed President Ferdinand Marcos, who
- died last September. "The Marcoses were masters of deception,"
- said prosecutors. "They elevated three-card monte [a form of
- shell game] to an art form." Scoffed Marcos' lawyer, Gerry
- Spence: "In this country one doesn't become a criminal by
- sleeping with one's husband."
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