To stave off such a stunt, Okhotin said the judge in his case had sent the slated witnesses “a real appeal to these people to come to the courtroom so that the trial could take place.”

Yesterday, he said that the second porter’s failure to show up and testify did not seem to have been part of any such large-scale delaying tactic—nor did the judge’s one-week recess worry him.

“At least on that side, my fears have been allayed,” he said.

Okhotin said Tuesday evening that this was a particular concern for him because any postponement risked cutting into the beginning of the semester at HDS, where he still eagerly anticipates finishing his masters in Theological Studies.

If acquitted, he said Cambridge would be his immediate destination.

“I would get on the first available flight and come home back to the States,” he said the night before his trial began. “I still have two term papers that I need to finish some time.”

Still, Okhotin said it was not a simple question of prosecute or release, guilty or innocent. He and others speculated before the trial that the prosecutors and judge might insist on going through with the full courtroom process even if they did not intend to follow through on the smuggling charges against Okhotin, as a way of exposing the corruption many say is rampant in the Russian customs system.

“They’re sick and tired of customs,” he said. “There are some people in the city of Moscow’s government who are just happy...that there’s an honest person who’s going to stand up.”

Okhotin said Tuesday that in the case of such a show trial, he would not cooperate with what he termed “a game taking place outside of whatever I do,” despite his adamant opposition to the alleged misconduct of Russian customs officials.

“All I want is for the funds to be distributed, charges to be dropped and permission to go back to the States,” he said then. “If they want to make anything bigger of this, I’m not interested in that.”

Another possibility mentioned by Okhotin and Sonnenberg, which they said could still happen after Wednesday’s events, was that the judge would declare Okhotin “conditionally guilty”—freeing him for the time being, but holding the promise of jail if he committed any acts of smuggling in the future. Such a verdict would leave Okhotin still technically guilty of a crime he adamantly says he did not commit.

If the judge hands down such a verdict next week, Okhotin said he would in all likelihood return to the United States and fight an appeal from there, no matter how many years it takes—and it might be many.

“If they choose to go this route my position is I will defend the facts of what happened on that date,” he said Thursday. “I will work as long as I can until I exhaust all the legal remedies.”

Sonnenberg said some uncertainty and lack of immediate resolution was inevitable, and that in its face a verdict of conditional guilt would be best fought far from Russian shores.

“You get all psyched up for a case and then he was sort of hoping to have it all done with today,” he said of Okhotin. “In reality it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process. If there’s this in-between fudging decision...you have to sort of get off the principled position and just rationally go to the States, finish school, get on with your life.”