Should Miss Harding now be tried, Mr. Steubs asked, "how could the court select qualified unbiased jurors in view of the vast media attention given to Mr. Hoevet's remarks?"

The officers of the court go to enormous lengths to choose unbiased jurors.

"Men and women have the same ability to be unbiased jurors," Mr. Porter replied.

Instead of allowing a careful voir dire process to weed out biased jurors, the court baldly declared that even making an attempt to find unbiased jurors would be "fruitless."

He prevailed when the district attorney could not muster enough unbiased jurors to sit in judgment of Ed from the Tee-Pee, and the Legislature relaxed laws regarding video poker in taverns.

The defendants had requested that the trial not be heard by a jury, saying they did not believe they could find 12 unbiased jurors.

But it will surely make it hard to find unbiased jurors if the case goes to trial.

Kunstler and Kuby argued they would have no problem finding 12 unbiased jurors, and claimed Ferguson had already been publicly attacked in the press by government and police officials.

The case was moved to Tucson when a judge decided that the pretrial publicity would make it hard to find unbiased jurors in Washington.

Courts are often presented with claims that unbiased jurors cannot be found for notorious cases.