"Where did you live before you lived in Waterbury?"

"Do you know any of these people [a list of perhaps 12 names]?"

"Are you personal friends with any policemen?"

"Have you seen any of these articles [major articles in The New Yorker, New York, Reader's Digest, etc. ]?"

Charles Garry said last week, "You know right away whom you don't want." Thus often the defense questioning is geared towards "trapping" the juror into admitting to the court some prejudice or experience which is predictable to the sympathetic observer.

Last week when I visited the trial, the defense was left with only one precious peremptory challenge, and the pressure was immense to "trap" the hostile juror into making a statement which would give the court cause to excuse him. The very last member of one panel of 50 jurors was a college-educated supervisor at Schick-Eversharp Razor, a company which is currently engaged in making a film about the Panthers. This man, a member of the National Rifle Association, had talked to colleagues who had been excused for cause, for being, among other things, too involved with the making of the film.

Obviously a poor risk for Seale and Huggins.... A true undercover agent.... Yet although Garry and Roraback questioned him for almost an hour, this juror refused to admit that he had been exposed to any publicity, that he had any opinions whatsoever, that his various connections would prejudice him in any way. At last Garry was forced to use his last challenge to get rid of him. As he left the courtroom, the juror smirked at Seale as if to say, "You may have kept me off your jury but I sure did some damage in the process."

That day in court one juror was selected, however. The policewoman who searched my body and my belongings for unidentified dangerous objects as I entered the courtroom commented later that I must have brought everyone luck. The tenth juror was a true case of American Blind Justice-a black woman who had a problem with her eyes which prevented her from reading the newspaper and thus insulated her from pre-trial publicity.

After using the last of its challenges the defense planned to move for an end to jury selection, on the basis that there is no statutory requirement for a jury of twelve. It is probable that they will fare about as well with this motion as they did with their challenge to the method by which the grand jury which indicted the Panthers was selected.

That motion failed; it was based on the proposition that the grand jury did not constitute a "jury of peers" because it was predominantly middleaged and white. Under normal selection procedure, potential jurors must be registered voters and permanent residents. This fact alone might preclude the selection of "peers" of the Panthers as jurors, but the grand jury was also made up almost exclusively of friends of the sheriff, the prosecutors, etc.

If the defense motion fails, jury selection will drag on for several more weeks before the actual trial begins, and before there will be a chance that public interest in the case will resume. If and when Seale and Huggins again enjoy mass support, the essential political nature of their trial will be spotlighted.

However, for anyone who bothers to make that trip to New Haven during the calm before the storm, the heavily charged political atmosphere is obvious, despite the courtroom decorum, mostly enforced by Seale and Huggins, partly out of pragmatism and partly out of a grudging respect for Judge Mulvey, who seems to try very hard to maintain his high standards of criminal justice and yet to make them fit this unusual case.

The politics are obvious as Seale and Huggins enter the courtroom and raise the clenched fist to the cluster of observers; as Garry hammers home Seale's political history; as the prosecutor asks the potential jurors what they think of the Panthers' Ten-Point Program; as the dozens of jurors move through the courtroom like the Silent Majority on parade. The politics are obvious as the observers endure the body searches; they band together in sharing food, drinks, books, chairs, worry about how thin and wane Huggins has become, worshipfully note Seale's daily state of mind, and then reflect it, scurry out of the courtroom at the end of the day to catch a last glimpse of the defendants being led away.

The politics are obvious in the way Seale and Huggins have been treated in jail, in the way that even Mulvey seems powerless to order any real change in their enforced life-style.

Charles Garry commented last week, "I'm tired, I'm awfully tired.... If the Panthers were doing their job right, they wouldn't need me."

A member of the Panther Defense Committee replied, "These things take time; one of these days you'll be out of a job."

"I don't know. I only hope so. I can't wait," Garry answered.

Members of the Panther Defense Committee say that Garry has admitted that he has no hope of winning the case in the courtroom, and claims that the only solution is in the streets. As Newton was helped, so the story goes, so will Seale and Huggins be freed. Otherwise, the best hope is a compromise verdict like McLucas' as opposed to the electric chair.

Perhaps the story is true; perhaps Garry is right; perhaps no matter how hard the good liberals like Judge Mulvey try, a square peg won't fit into a round hole, a political trial won't try like an ordinary criminal one. But will the liberals, who would care if they could be convinced, and the conservatives, who wouldn't, be convinced by marching in the streets when the jury comes back? Will Seale and Huggins go free?