Campaign Spending Is at Heart of Edwards Trial CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Jury selection was scheduled to start Thursday in the federal trial of John Edwards, the start of at least six weeks of courtroom sparring between the corruption unit of the Department of Justice and a high-powered criminal defense team representing a man who twice reached for the presidency. Chuck Burton/Associated Press Former Senator John Edwards's fall from grace for an affair has been tabloid fodder for several years. Mr. Edwards's fall from grace for a hidden affair has long been tabloid fodder. A former Democratic senator from North Carolina, he is being tried on six felony charges, four involving whether he accepted illegal campaign contributions. He also faces charges of conspiracy and making false statements. A conviction would send Mr. Edwards to prison for up to 30 years and could bring up to $1.5 million in fines. The government contends that Mr. Edwards knowingly used nearly $1 million from two wealthy donors to hide his affair with Rielle Hunter and the daughter the couple conceived. Ms. Hunter once made videos for Mr. Edwards's campaign. The money was used to support Ms. Hunter, the baby and Andrew Young, a campaign aide who claimed paternity, as they spent months traveling to cities like Santa Barbara, Calif., and Aspen, Colo., trying to hide from the news media. Mr. Edwards's legal team will argue that the money was intended only to keep his wife from finding out about the continuation of the affair, which he had told her was over, and that a child was now involved. Their arguments are likely to emphasize that because gift taxes were paid on the money and it was not funneled through traditional campaign accounts, it was not a campaign contribution. Lawyers for the Department of Justice will counter that the money was used to try to influence the election. If the public found out about the affair and the child, surely Mr. Edwards's 2008 bid for the presidency would have ended sooner than it did. "There has never been a prosecution remotely like this," said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed a motion in support of Mr. Edwards in the case. If the government prevails, she said, many kinds of personal spending could be called into question. Even gym memberships and haircuts paid for by the candidate could be considered campaign spending, she said. "Everyone wants to punish him because he's a crappy human being," Ms. Sloan said. But in America we prosecute conduct, not character. Mr. Edwards's character is going to be hard to keep out of the trial. His affair was conducted while his wife, Elizabeth, publicly struggled with cancer. She died in December 2010. Mr. Edwards was also drawn into a battle in civil court that centered on a videotape that reportedly showed him having sex with Ms. Hunter. Mr. Young, who has written a book about his involvement and is expected to be a star witness in the trial, had taken the tape from a house he had shared with Ms. Hunter. A judge ruled in February that it should be destroyed. To keep the federal case strictly focused on its legal merits, Mr. Edwards had asked for a bench trial. But prosecutors preferred to air the case in front of a jury. Prosecutors last month filed motions asking that Mr. Edwards's heart problem, which along with his eldest daughter's wedding in October had kept the trial from starting, be kept from jurors. They also tried to keep the amount of prison time he faces from the jury, arguing that people might not want to take a widowed father from his two school-age children who still live with him.