Where's Scholl going?

Tuesday begins with Agent LC McNeil's fourth day on the stand and Scholl's second day of cross examination. We're listening to more audio tapes of Ford down in Miami with McNeil and Willis (Exhibit 112). The conversation swings from the movie business, to women, to back to the movie business.

Scholl stops the tape when McNeil says, "You want me to handle that?" McNeil is referring to a woman the men see at the bar and are interested in getting to know a little better.

Scholl wants to know why the conversation stops and McNeil says he turned off the recording device when he went over to talk to the woman. He turned the recorder back on when he returned to the table. Scholl also wants to know if the woman agreed to party with them. McNeil says "No."

Now if you're wondering what McNeil's success rate with woman has to do with the Tennessee Waltz case, you're not alone. It's questions like these that leave many of us pondering where exactly Scholl's going --as they have nothing to do with bribes, E-Cycle or even Senator Ford. But maybe that's the purpose.

The cross examination is a series of conversations rather than a series of questions. Scholl relies on the audio tapes to tell the story about what happened instead of having McNeil recount what occurred and there are many times we are left wondering how he's going to attempt to clear Ford of the bribery charges.

So far, Scholl has not touched or approached the videos that show Ford repeatedly accepting piles of cash from McNeil. Nor has he brought up the legislation paper that Ford drafted for E-Cycle.

Instead, over the last two days, the questions Scholl asks and the transcripts he plays focus on three things:

1) Lies vs role playing:
How far can you take an undercover role before it becomes a lie?

2) FBI procedures:
Was McNeil's reporting and recording procedures sloppy or were they exclusionary?

3)Entrapment:
Did the FBI go out of their way to trap Ford in the undercover operation?