n any cause celebre, and if he has acquitted any plainly
guilty defendant in the past it is not likely that his services will
be required. If, however, he has convicted in such a case the 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 on the same facts which will lead
a sound jury to convict. A famous prosecutor used to say, "Get your
jury--the case will take care of itself."

But as the examination of the panel and the opening address come last
in point of chronology it will be well to begin at the beginning and
see what the labors of the prosecutor are in the initial stages of
preparation. Let us take, for example, some notorious case, where an
unfortunate victim has died from the effects of a poisoned pill or
draught of medicine, or has been found dead in his room with a revolver
bullet in his heart. Some time before the matter has come into the hands
of the prosecutor, the press and the police have generally been doing
more or less (usually less) effective work upon the case. The yellow
journals have evolved some theory of who is the culprit and h