A misdemeanor plea, if one is struck, would let both sides claim victory while providing a potentially important evidentiary step as the prosecutors build their case.

Mr. Manning, who was defeated in an election last year, had insisted early on that the misdemeanor pleas, while bitterly unsatisfying to the woman and women's rights groups, were the harshest that could be obtained, given the evidence.

The misdemeanor plea allows him to keep his job without fear of impeachment or removal, and the conviction will be stricken if Senator Trotter completes a year of non-reporting court supervision.

And Warrick, who played with thunderous reminders about his misdemeanor guilty plea and two-game suspension for taking deeply discounted clothes, never let the crowd at the Swamp get to him.

As for two misdemeanor guilty pleas in the past 15 months for selling counterfeit recordings, they involved trying to bolster his income from a cell-phone sales job, he said.

Didn't look good to juries if a major criminal came into court offering testimony in exchange for a misdemeanor plea.

But the inquiry resulted in a single misdemeanor plea by a contractor, the headlines soon faded, and the highway superintendent, Harold Malkmes, remains in office today.

That case ended with a single misdemeanor plea; no executive was charged.

"What's going on here is similar to taking a misdemeanor plea from Saddam Hussein and prosecuting his lieutenants for setting the oil wells on fire."

What of Mr. Weinberger's accusation that Mr. Walsh tried to "coerce false testimony" against colleagues in exchange for a misdemeanor plea?