How the prosecutors must have wished to have a go at Ralph Cioffi in the flesh! If only Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, the two Bear Stearns fund managers acquitted yesterday of insider trading and other charges, had had the gall to take the stand in their own defenses and to submit to what the Feds must have hoped would be a withering cross-examination. Well, no such luck.

White-collar crime is by its nature often not the stuff of high drama in the courtroom, but what makes it fun is that so many defendants, convinced they can impress a jury with their authority, sincerity, and intelligence, take the stand. Then, most often, they go to jail. There were the grand pooh-bahs of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling and (RIP) Ken Lay. There was the awful performance of Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski. There...