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"I almost think I should begin with a joke about cold cash or frozen assets," defense lawyer Robert Trout told the jury at the start of his opening statement yesterday.

Probably a good instinct: Trout has little to lose.

His client is William Jefferson, the then-congressman caught on film by the FBI picking up a briefcase full of $100,000 in bribe money in a Pentagon City parking lot. That's the same congressman who was caught days later with 90,000 of those marked dollars wrapped in foil and put in food boxes in the freezer of his home.

As the trial opened at the Alexandria federal courthouse, prosecutors spent 75 minutes laying out their case, but really all they needed to do was show jurors the photo of the contents of Jefferson's freezer: a box of...