The Non-Trial of the Century

When China’s fallen political grand dame, Gu Kailai, steps into a courtroom this week to face a murder charge, one of the few things we can expect with any certainty is the verdict: guilty. Barring a political tornado between now and the scheduled start of her trial, on Thursday, Gu will be convicted in the poisoning of her erstwhile associate, Neil Heywood, a British businessman who, in effect, seems to have ambled into an executive suite at Chinese Communism Inc. and ended up dead in a hotel room in the mountains.