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- <text id=90TT0806>
- <title>
- Apr. 02, 1990: American Notes:New York City
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Apr. 02, 1990 Nixon Memoirs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 25
- American Notes
- NEW YORK CITY
- Imelda's Day In Court
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-