04/16/01
VAL WALTON
News staff writer

As lawyers begin settling upon jurors to hear the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church murder case today, they will eliminate rather than select, experts say.

"It's deselection," said Joseph Rice, a California-based trial consultant who has been involved in hundreds of cases. "All you get to do is identify the people you want to remove - not pick anybody and keep them. Each side has a right to excuse certain jurors they think are against their client's position."

Blanton's attorney, John Robbins, and prosecutors face the arduous task of turning a pool of at least 100 registered Jefferson County voters into a jury of 12 and perhaps four alternates. Prosecuting the case will be U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, assistant U.S. attorney Robert Posey and Jefferson County deputy district attorney Jeff Wallace.

Once chosen, the jury will decide whether former Klansman Thomas E. Blanton Jr. participated in the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing that killed four girls.

Blanton, originally to be prosecuted with Bobby Frank Cherry, will be tried alone after Circuit Judge James Garrett delayed indefinitely the prosecution of Cherry, whose mental competency is in question.

While the Constitution says defendants are entitled to a fair and impartial jury, one prosecutor said fairness is not a litigator's objective.

"Lawyers talk about fair juries, but no lawyer wants a fair jury," said John Yung, a former assistant state attorney general who helped prosecute Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, the lone person convicted in the bombing. "They want to get one prejudiced in their favor."

Most lawyers have notions about the ideal juror, but jury experts said demographic stereotypes are not applicable in such an unusual and charged case. The focus, they said, must be on a prospective juror's mind.

The nuances of race surround jury selection in this case. The church bombing was a racist attack. The four girls were black. Blanton and his co-defendant Cherry are white.

But lawyers may not legally eliminate prospective jurors because of their race or gender.

That wasn't the case in 1977 when state prosecutors tried Chambliss. The defense used its strikes to remove black men and women while prosecutors used most of their strikes to remove white males. Nine whites and three blacks convicted Chambliss, who died in 1985. The attorneys now will have to look beyond the basics of race, gender and age in weeding out jurors.

"The best lawyers I know never really completely rely on stereotypes because generalizations only carry you so far," said Richard Jaffe, former president of the Greater Birmingham Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. "In the end, too many other factors influence your decision.

"The lawyers on this case, none will rely on stereotypes in my view. That is not going to happen. It's going to be much more detailed," Jaffe said.

Rice, who was the lead consultant for Nicole Brown Simpson family's lawsuit against O.J. Simpson, agreed.

"What is significant is life experiences, attitudes and opinions," he said. "They cut across demographics. I find in my experience that basic demographics are rarely significant. You cannot make decisions on such simple levels. You have to get deep and personal with the juror."

The fact that the bombing case is 37 years old and has generated countless newspaper and magazine articles, books and movies complicates the process.

"The more highly publicized a case, the longer and more complicated the jury selection process will be," said James Sturdivant, a Birmingham defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. "You have to determine how much they've read or heard."

Attorneys in the case will be aided by questionnaires that prospective jurors will receive after arriving at the lower level courtroom in the Mel Bailey Criminal Justice Center. Lawyers will question the jurors privately. Blanton's attorney, Robbins, will use a jury consultant.

The questionnaires will provide general information such as a prospective jurors' memberships in political organizations, any affiliations with Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, whether they lived in Birmingham in 1963, any organization they belong to in which a members' race is an issue, what organizations they financially support, whether they are former law enforcement officials or chemists.

Tommy Spina, a Birmingham defense lawyer, said an important aspect of the selection is to discover prospective jurors' hidden biases.

"I want the jury talking to me," he said. "I want to know what they are thinking, what they are feeling. I want to know how do they feel about a case that's 37 years old.

"Hopefully, whatever jury is selected will be able to judge the defendants' guilt or innocence based upon evidence in the courtroom, not based upon history books or whatever feelings they may have developed based on the history of Birmingham."