“Like Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme itself, the trial of five of his former aides has been virtually unprecedented in its scope.

“A federal jury of 12 men and women on Monday began deciding whether the defendants are guilty of aiding in Madoff’s massive fraud.

“And the jurors face a Herculean task.

“Over five months, they have heard more than 40 witnesses; the transcript of the trial weighed in at 12,000 pages. The government has introduced 1,600 exhibits, some of them hundreds of pages long.

“Closing arguments alone lasted nearly 25 hours, spread across two weeks. And U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain’s two sets of jury instructions to help jurors understand how to apply the law to the evidence ran an astonishing 250 pages. They took her more than eight hours, with the judge finishing delivering them Monday and sending the jury out to start deliberating.”

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