“Your Honor, the juror says she isn’t confident of her ability to judge the evidence objectively.”

He humors me on this point, but makes clear that I should not view this as any precedent. He will judge the jurors, for cause, on their individual responses.

I tell him I understand.

“Very well. Mrs. Douglas, you’re dismissed.”

One down, I think.

She files out and passes her replacement on the way. Harold Parry takes her chair. He is fifty-five, looking seventy, in a string tie. No frat brother, but perhaps still capable of fantasies. I look at Talia, sitting impassively, glowing in the chair next to me. Yes, I think, Mr. Parry can dream.

It is after lunch, edging on toward mid-afternoon, before Acosta finishes these preliminaries and turns the jury over to the players.

We work through the jurors, give and take; me first, then Nelson.

I find he is skilled in his questioning, polished in his approach. He uses his noble bearing not to overwhelm the jury but to folks it to death.

There is an art to voir dire, different from the examination of witnesses, and Duane Nelson excels in it.

The adroit question to a juror, unlike direct examination, which often seeks a “yes” or “no” reply, is open-ended, designed to elicit conversation, a narrative from the veniremen, during which the lawyer can search out subtle prejudices. He works on his first juror, Mark Felding, in his thirties, a draftsman for a local architectural firm.

“Tell me about your family, Mr. Felding.

“Tell me, did you attend college?

“Tell me a little about the subjects you studied.”

Like the spider to the fly-“tell me,” “tell me,” “tell me.”

Nelson is schooled. He keys in on the big-ticket items. Studies have shown that more than in any other place-the family, school, church, or social organizations-overt prejudice is fostered most in the work place.

“Tell us a little about your line of work,” he says. “Tell us about your fellow workers. Are many of them women? Are any of your supervisors women?”

He looks for signs, the latent sneer, overt patronage, resentment at being under some occupational high heel, promising signs, things that might, in the due course of trial, lead to a little unknowing and repressed revenge.

Felding waves it off, normal, well adjusted by all accounts, “red-blooded,” perhaps himself a skirt chaser-good for our side.

Nelson works his way through three more jurors in an hour and turns them over to me again.

I return to Felding, lay light on him, some follow-up questions to put a face on it after Nelson’s examination. I’m throwing him a few big marshmallows.

“Can you judge this case fairly?

“Can you put everything out of your mind but the evidence?”

Questions requiring nothing more than a cursory “yes” or “no.” I try to pump up a little suspicion, a projection to Nelson that this man is not all I would hope for.

I move on to witness number four, Mary Blanchard, twenty-seven, a secretary with a small electronics company.

The danger of women-married and, worse, divorced-is that Talia will be viewed as the mythical “Other Woman,” a female capable of stealing their husbands away if given the opportunity. In the age-old battle of the distaff set, a man is the prize that goes to the victor, and Talia has displayed an astonishing ability to win in this war. She will be perceived as a threat in the competition for men. The prudent defense lawyer will avoid, like the plague, people on the jury who feel threatened by the defendant. To admit too many women to the jury is to run the risk of turning the trial into a silent and psychic cat fight.

“Tell me, Ms. Blanchard, about your family,” I say.

Three children, a dog, divorced. I shudder and move on to happier subjects. In an hour I have worked my way through three more jurors.

I turn them over to Nelson and he starts with Blanchard, then moves to Susan Hoskins, a housewife, married to the pastor of a church. He moves more swiftly now. By three in the afternoon we have worked our way through the first panel of jurors, and Acosta asks us to pass upon them for cause.

“Peremptories, gentlemen?”

I look at Nelson and nod, giving him the first shot.

He pauses for a moment back at the counsel table and looks at his paper with the little grids. Then like lightning from a dark cloud: “The people would thank and excuse juror number one, Your Honor, Mr. Felding.”

“You’re excused, Mr. Felding.”

Zap, like that, and Felding is gone. The others are looking about, avoiding eye contact with this undesirable as he leaves, wondering what it was he had said that caused Nelson to reach back and make him an instant outcast.

I return the favor. Mary Blanchard and Susan Hoskins are history, replaced by a man and a woman. Attrition will out, we will end up with a little male domination on this jury. Nelson comes back, and three more are gone. My turn, and I take out another four. By the time we are finished the jury box is looking decimated.

As a theory they call it the “alpha factor.” In recent years I’ve become one of its adherents.

Psychologists and those who work with them have isolated individual characteristics that cause some persons to establish dominance over others, territorial imperatives that give them influence. This human authority quotient is set by a number of factors. Age, gender, financial history, education, social status, mastery of the spoken tongue, and the number of people one supervises on the job-all of these and more are keys, indicative of the fact that the person may possess the alpha factor.

It’s a dangerous game, dealing in authoritarian personalities, and not one that most defense attorneys take to naturally. The trick is to find that dominant spirit who will favor your theory of the case, take pity on your client or otherwise buy into your evidentiary bag of goodies. Pick wrong and this godlike figure in the jury room may lead the pack to hang your client.

I thought I had him this morning. Sixty, silver-gray hair, articulate as the devil in his den, retired, professor emeritus at a small private college. A sociologist’s dream boat. Nine yards of touchyfeely in a package that looked like Maurice Chevalier. He came on strong, a humanist of the first order. Without his saying it, I could tell that to this man, human violence, even the ability to murder, was a character flaw to be counseled, cured, and quickly forgiven.

Nelson turned him into instant dog meat-cannon fodder. I could have spit when he wasted this guy with a peremptory.

Now we are getting thin. Challenges for cause are becoming more critical, but difficult to get. To Acosta, partiality, the specter of prejudice, is a thing of the past, a ghost that hangs its coat somewhere other than in his courtroom.

* * *

Five days into voir dire and we have empaneled nine jurors, six men and three women. The other three plus two alternates will take most of this day. We’re growing weary, doing this jury like an aerial dog fight, strafing the box, dealing out casualties, and taking more from this “target-rich environment,” as they say. The marble-mouths in the Pentagon would say they are “getting attrited.” The jury, the nine who have been here the longest, are beginning to look like the walking wounded.

I’m matching Nelson peremptory for peremptory. We each have two left in our respective quivers, and I’m beginning to wonder if I will have to go back to the well, to remind Acosta of his earlier pledge, a few more if we need them, for fairness’ sake.

“Mrs. Jackson”-I dip my wing and dive; another run-“tell me a little about yourself; what do you do occupationally?”

The questionnaire that came with the jury list says “school administrator.” I want to see how many variations she can play on this theme, to draw her out.