Brittney Griner's trial for allegedly taking hashish oil into Russia is scheduled to begin Friday.
At that point it will have been 134 days since the WNBA star was taken into custody while trying to enter the country through a Moscow-area airport.
She faces 10 years in prison if convicted. But before the trial even begins, U.S. experts and officials say Griner will be the subject of a show trial, and a guilty verdict is almost a certainty.
The entire exercise, they say, is a negotiation tactic to push the Biden administration into trading for her freedom.
"It's a foregone conclusion and the trial is to uphold the state and confirm the power of the state," says William Pomeranz
The acting director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in Washington and an expert on Russian law. "Justice is not the immediate issue."
So what can people expect for Griner over the coming weeks and maybe months? ESPN spoke to several experts about the case.
"A trial there is not a trial in the U.S. sense -- opening statements, jury selection, 'call your first witness' -- none of that"
Says Tom Firestone, a former resident legal adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and currently a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan.
For the most part the "trial" will be a judge reading the prosecutor's case file into the record.
At some point prosecutors will call witnesses, and the judge will often lead the questioning. Sometimes the prosecutors sit there "like potted plants," one expert said.