All Deliberate, Little Speed

Many veniremen are obviously eager to be among the twelve jurors who will sit in judgment on Richard Speck, 25, the adrift seaman who is accused of murdering eight student nurses in Chicago last July. A middle-aged pastry cook from Peoria, 111., assured a quizzical prosecutor, "I've not discussed the case nor heard anything about it on the radio. I'd be fair, all right." Yet when Speck's court-appointed attorney, Gerald Getty, asked her if she thought she could honestly find Speck innocent, she shook her head and replied, "No, it was taking life, after all." She was excused --as 431 other veniremen have been in the four weeks since Speck's case was called in the Peoria courtroom of Illinois Judge Herbert C. Paschen. By last week only eight jurors had been selected in one of the slowest pretrial impaneling procedures in U.S. history.-

Judge Paschen is taking great pains to avoid repetition of the outcome of the 1954 trial of Cleveland's Dr. Sam Sheppard, who was found guilty of killing his wife, only to have the verdict upset by the U.S. Supreme Court because of prejudicial press coverage. Yet it is not the judge, but the defense and prosecuting attorneys who are taking all the time. Each is questioning prospective jurors carefully, and is being cut off by Paschen only if he becomes unusually long-winded.

Nevertheless, many people were wondering if the Peoria proceedings were dragging more slowly than was really necessary. In the heavily publicized fraud trial of Influence Peddler Bobby Baker in January, it took only one day to impanel a jury. Federal Judge Oliver Gasch said, "I see no reason why jury selection should be the slowest process in the American system of justice." The process is much swifter in federal courts, because judges--not attorneys--usually question prospective jurors. But even without the built-in difficulties of digging up unprejudiced jurors for Speck, the Peoria selection was destined by Illinois state law to be a seemingly endless process. Besides dismissal of jurors for cause, the prosecution and defense both have 20 peremptory challenges (meaning the dismissal of potential jurors without explanation) on each of the eight murder charges--making a total of 320. At week's end no less than 194 such challenges remained to be made.

*A Chicago court gave up two weeks ago, after five weeks of impaneling in the murder case of Robert Lassiter, charged with starting a tavern fire that killed 13 people. With only eight jurors picked, the defense successfully moved for a bench trial without jury.

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