Follow Stanford trial live via Twitter as it begins today

Nearly three years after his world shrank from seaside luxury to a Houston jail cell, R. Allen Stanford will stand trial starting today on charges that he paid for the luxury by bilking investors, including many in the Baton Rouge area. Houston Chronicle reporter Terri Langford will be reporting on the trial as it happens via Twitter, and you can follow the action at her feed here or search for updates via the hashtag #stanfordtrial. A federal indictment charges that the 61-year-old Stanford—a Mexia, Texas, native whose financial empire was based in Houston—took investors for more than $7 billion, mostly through certificates of deposit issued by his bank in Antigua. Stanford, once knighted in that Caribbean island nation, says he is innocent of the charges. The indictment lists five co-conspirators, four of whom are named in another indictment and will be tried later; the fifth, charged separately, has entered a guilty plea and is expected to testify in the trial. Other defendants are free on bail or, in one case, fighting extradition from Antigua. But U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled that Stanford is a flight risk, and he has been held without bail since his arrest in June 2009. His trial had been scheduled for January 2011, but Hittner delayed it so Stanford could be treated for addiction to medications he was prescribed after suffering a head injury in a 2009 jailhouse fight. Read the full story here.