Finally, a Jury

Week after week, the stalled courtroom clock in New Haven symbolized the jury selection in the kidnap-murder trial of Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale and Mrs. Erika Huggins. In all, 1,550 persons were called and 1,035 prospective jurors actually questioned. Last week, after four months, the fatiguing process ended when two alternates (one black, one white) joined five blacks and seven whites in one of the most painfully culled panels in U.S. history.

The defendants are being tried on charges stemming from the slaying of Alex Rackley, a fellow Panther and alleged police informer. Like many defense lawyers, Seale's attorney, Charles Garry, sees his client as a victim. He insists that a black militant cannot obtain a panel of impartial jurors from voter rolls, which are stocked largely with white, middle-class citizens. None of them, he claims, "could possibly judge an enemy of the Establishment."

Calmly trying to deflate that notion, Superior Court Judge Harold Mulvey allowed great latitude to defense attorneys to probe for latent prejudices in prospective jurors. If a white man innocently remarked that he had nothing against "them," the defense swarmed all over him. A factory foreman who said that "my lead man is a colored boy" was later dismissed. Seale's own prejudices, in fact, affected the proceedings. When Garry questioned a white employee of the Schick Safety Razor Co., for example, Seale scribbled on paper: "His eyes don't blink. MECHANICAL CHAUVINIST." Garry used one of his last challenges to excuse the man.

Despite the tedium, the atmosphere was tense from the beginning. After Mrs. Huggins' attorney, Catherine Roraback, noticed a prospective juror trembling on the stand, she asked, "Are you afraid of my client?" The reply was a shaky "yes." Scores of veniremen, faced with the prospect of months away from their jobs and families, were swiftly excused simply because they stated that they had an opinion of the defendants' guilt. "These people aren't dumbbells," Mulvey commented. "They don't want to sit on this case."

Three weeks ago, having exhausted its peremptory challenges (dismissal without stating reasons), the defense asked the court to shut off further questioning of veniremen and allow the trial to proceed with the eleven jurors already selected. "If there is to be any semblance of a fair trial," argued Garry, "we should go to trial with the jury we now have." Judge Mulvey rejected the motion and the U.S. Supreme Court let the denial stand.

Does the defense really want an impartial jury? Earlier this month Garry eagerly appeared on TV's David Frost Show to attack M.I.T. Political Scientist Edward Jay Epstein, author of a recent New Yorker article disproving Garry's claim that U.S. police have murdered 28 Panthers in one year. Garry labeled Epstein a "racist" and "paid agent of the CIA." Such intemperance could hardly be expected to do Seale any good. If any of his jurors saw the TV interview, it might be hard to forget--although they are dutybound to try.

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