district attorney may try to lure the other side into
accepting him by making it appear that he himself is doubtful
as to the juror's desirability. Sometimes persons accused of
crime themselves, and actually under indictment, find their
way onto the panels, and more than one ex-convict has appeared
there in some inexplicable fashion. But to find them out may
well require a double shift of men working day and night for a
month before the case is called, and what may appear to be the
most trivial fact thus discovered may in the end prove the
decisive argument for or against accepting the juror.

Panel after panel may be exhausted before a jury in a great
murder trial has been selected, for each side in addition to
its challenges for "cause" or "bias" has thirty* peremptory
ones which it may exercise arbitrarily. If the writer's
recollection is not at fault, the large original panel drawn
in the first Molineux trial was used up and several others had
to be drawn until eight hundred talesmen had been interrogated
before the jury was finally selected. It is usual to examine
at least fifty in the ordinary murder case before a jury is
secured.


* In the State of New York.


It may seem to the reader that this scrutiny of talesmen is
not strictly preparation for the trial, but, in fact, it is
fully as important as getting ready the facts themselves; for
a poor jury, either from ignorance or prejudice, will acquit