When jury selection starts this morning in the second trial against Clarence Norman Jr., there will be more on the line than the $5,000 check the former Brooklyn Democratic Party leader is accused of stealing.

This particular charge against Norman is a piece of the much larger case of Brooklyn judicial corruption that prosecutors have been trying to crack for more than two years.

By pursuing this charge against Norman, who has already been convicted of soliciting illegal campaign contributions and still faces two more trials, prosecutors are amassing negotiating chips that could help their probe into how judgeships are sold in the borough.

“They are looking to connect the dots. That looks pretty clear,” the head of the government and politics department at Wagner College, Jeffrey Kraus, said. “They are looking to find somebody who will tell them, ‘This is the way it’s done.'”

Norman, who was stripped of his Crown Heights assembly seat and his position as party leader, has already declined to cooperate with prosecutors, saying he doesn’t know about a quidproquo arrangement between the party and judicial candidates.

On Friday, Norman’s lawyer, Edward Rappaport, said: “Mr. Norman is a very cooperative type of person, but what they want is for us to tell them that we received money from judges, and it’s just not true. I don’t suspect that the district attorney wants Mr. Norman to commit perjury, does he?”

When asked whether Norman had declined to cooperate with the district attorney because federal investigators are looking into the case and would not recognize any immunity deal, Mr. Rappaport said no. He said he did not even know of a federal investigation.

Norman’s first conviction represented a major victory for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, who won a contested Democratic primary in September. Mr. Hynes was criticized by opponents for not doing enough to root out corruption and by Norman’s supporters for targeting him for political gain.

After the conviction, the lead prosecutor in the case, Michael Vecchinone, who also heads the Rackets Division, told reporters that the “world of Brooklyn politics is not the same today as it was yesterday.”

Norman’s backers said it was an unjustified fishing expedition, but if prosecutors win this case, they will have one more weapon to use against Norman, who is already facing up to four years in prison.

Political analysts said if the district attorney wins again, he will also be able to use his success as a warning to others, including the executive director of the party, Jeffrey Feldman, who, like Norman, is charged with extortion and coercion.

That indictment accuses them of demanding that two judicial candidates, Karen Yellen and Marcia Sikowitz, hire the party’s go-to vendor, Branford Communication, to print campaign literature, and to hire a political consultant favored by the Brooklyn Democratic Party, William Boone, in exchange for the party’s endorsement in 2002.

Many who are following the case say one of the big outstanding questions is whether Mr. Feldman, who has a pending appeal, will cut a deal with prosecutors if his case heads to trial. According to published reports, Mr. Feldman has not had those discussions with prosecutors.

“One would think that would be appealing to him, but who knows,” a district leader in Brooklyn and self-described reformer, Alan Fleishman, said.

The case that begins today in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn centers on whether Norman illegally deposited a $5,000 check that was written out to his campaign committee into his personal bank account.

During a pre-trial hearing last week, Mr. Rappaport told the judge that the potential jury pool was “poisoned” by the extensive news coverage and that the accusations were empty.

The probe into judgeships was triggered in 2002 when Judge Gerald Garson was arrested on charges that he was accepting bribes to fix divorce cases. He has been suspended and indicted.

In the hopes of getting a more lenient treatment, however, Mr. Garson reportedly said he would offer prosecutors evidence that the Democratic clubhouse was selling its endorsements to candidates hoping to get on the bench. In Brooklyn, the Democratic Party line is tantamount to winning an election because there are so many party registrants.

While Mr. Garson did not give prosecutors anything usable, the incident did launch what is now an ongoing probe.

Another judge, Victor Barron, for example, pleaded guilty to bribery in 2002 and is in prison.

The deputy director for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, Jeremy Creelan, said the judicial selection process, particularly the nominating process for state Supreme Court judges, lends itself to corruption.

The nominating convention for state Supreme Court judges “gives party leaders complete control over the process and as a result encourages improper request of candidates and improper behavior on the part of party leaders,” he said. The center is challenging the constitutionality of the conventions in court.

As for the case against Norman, Assemblywoman Joan Millman said Friday: “I would hope that if there are things that he needs to say that he’ll say them in his own defense.”

She said she has known him for a long time, and that he has a wife and an infant. “It’s very hard to imagine somebody like Clarence spending a great deal of time in prison,” she said.