Holding up a plastic jug of moonshine for everyone to see, federal prosecutor Sharon Burnham told a jury Monday it came from a still site that put out 600 such gallon jugs in a week.

At that rate, the Halifax County moonshine operation would have produced 43,200 gallons of illegal liquor -- some of it bound for as far away as Philadelphia -- by the time federal agents closed it down in April 2006.

In a trial scheduled to last all week in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, authorities are alleging that Jody Alton Smith Sr. of Franklin County was behind the operation. Assisting him was Margaret Rigney Smith of Pittsylvania County, Burnham said.

Surveillance camera footage, land records, receipts for the sale of moonshine ingredients, other documents and possibly the testimony of co-defendants are all expected to play a part in what the defense called a purely circumstantial case.

After summarizing the many pieces of evidence in opening statements, Burnham told the jury that in the end, their sixth sense should lead them to guilty verdicts.

As for the other senses, Burnham advised jurors against the use of taste, pointing to the jug of moonshine. "I don't think the judge will approve of you tasting the evidence," she said.

Jody Smith's attorney, Gilbert Davis of Fairfax, said it's no secret that his client grew up in what's known as the moonshine capital of the world. "Some folks in Franklin County think it's a cultural heritage, rightly or wrongly," said Davis, who gained national prominence for representing Paula Jones, the woman who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment.

While Smith, 61, had some ties to the 6-acre site on which the moonshine was produced, the government will not be able to prove that he was involved in anything illegal, Davis said.

In his opening statement, Davis suggested that the four Franklin County men who pleaded guilty last week to assisting in the conspiracy were far more involved than what they told authorities.

Surveillance cameras set up by federal investigators showed Smith at a site where one of several buildings housed four 1,200-gallon pots used to make moonshine. But the property was also used as a hunt club, Davis said, and the government has no evidence to place Smith in the same building as the stills.

"He knows people who do make this stuff," Davis said. "You can't live in Franklin County and not know someone who does."

Prosecutors say that Margaret Smith assisted Jody Smith by taking over the mortgages for the property from him. The Smiths are not related.

Margaret Smith's attorney, Phillip Lingafelt of Roanoke, told the jury that she never set foot on the site and was busy two counties away taking care of her dying mother and dealing with her own health problems.