Testifying in his own corruption trial would be a huge gamble for Michael Carona

Inquiring minds want to know. Will Mike Carona take the stand in his corruption trial? Will a trial already expected to generate juicy testimony give us the ultimate dramatic showdown of having the former sheriff in the box, dueling with a government attorney?

Normally, you'd dismiss the possibility from the get-go. Some defendants just aren't up to it. They'd either melt or explode on the witness stand. Either way, not good.

But here we have Carona, coming out of virtual obscurity in 1998 to be elected three times as Orange County's top law enforcement officer and touted for his ability to win over critics. Even Assistant U.S. Atty. Brett Sagel described him in his opening statement Wednesday as "bright, articulate, charismatic."

And in a trial in which former friends with dubious backgrounds are likely to be Carona's most potent accusers, why not let the natural-born schmoozer take them on?

"By far the worst gamble for the defense is putting the defendant on the stand," says Chapman University School of Law professor Larry Rosenthal, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago who specialized in organized crime and public corruption cases. "Because the minute you put him on the stand, you lose the benefit of the reasonable doubt standard."

He says "there are dozens of places where reasonable doubt can creep in" during a trial. For example, jurors finding out that a defendant didn't properly fill out the required financial disclosure statements (which forms part of the case against Carona) might charitably conclude that he was too busy, simply not attentive enough or that the forms were overly complicated. Or even that it seems like a technicality, that it was a mistake they could see themselves making, and might not justify prison time.

But such musings can take on a whole different tone, Rosenthal says, if the defendant is facing a government attorney boring in on him with questions like: "You can't remember being given tens of thousands of dollars, sir? Does that happen to you every day, sir?"

And there's an immovable bottom line, Rosenthal says: "Once the jury thinks that defendant has looked them in the eye and lied, they convict."

In 5 1/2 years as a trial lawyer in the U.S. attorney's office, Rosenthal says, he preferred that the defendant testify. "It's only the very unusual defendant that can survive cross-examination and help himself."