1.Questionnaire-Based Juror Excusals and Screening

THE COURT: I just had a couple of things before we begin. I was told that counsel had perhaps agreed on one particular juror. When I went through this lot, I thought there were at least half a dozen people who could be excused on the basis of the questionnaire alone that were still in. This is a concern that I have, that we have some people who are pretty clearly -- for hardship reasons, self-employment, things like that, are pretty much in the zone of what we've been doing and I think will continue to do. There are two or three people here who have trips planned in February, there are a couple of people who are clearly wage-earners and so on.

So if you're talking about excusing one, I would like to expand the pool a little bit and maybe we can be more efficient. So if you want, I can tell you the ones that I think without further inquiry we could deal with beginning, actually, with the one who's been put over to today, Number 45, who says she's self-employed.

THE COURT: Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. But I was double-checking myself as I was doing it. Actually, I can do it from my notes.

Number 86: This is not so clear on the reasons -- so are clear by hardship and trips and things, and wage-earners. This guy just has a lot of noise of various kinds: His wife is pregnant; he's an MIT grad with two degrees from MIT; he was in the area and so on and so forth. It just seems he's not somebody for this jury. If you want to see him, we could see him, but I think his questionnaire --

THE COURT: Okay. 88, 94. This is for travel plans. 95 didn't complete the questionnaire. I don't know that I want somebody completing a questionnaire orally in front of us, so that would be disqualifying. A substantial failure. I mean, a question or two is one thing, but she quit halfway through, it looks like.

99: a trip; 103: trip; 107: wage-earner.

THE COURT: Fine. Let me just raise one other matter. Maybe I should raise this in public. If you think I should, I'll do it again.

The Globe has filed a motion concerning our procedures. I don't know whether the parties intend to weigh in on that or not. It's kind of an odd procedural issue. I guess the parties would have some right to be heard on it. I don't know. The Court has some right to be heard on it. I don't know whether -- maybe some of the U.S. attorneys are familiar with this. Sometimes a civil U.S. attorney represents the Court in matters like this. I don't know.

I'm a little uncomfortable being an advocate of our procedures and the decider of the motion. So I raise the question for you to think about. I'm not sure exactly how to proceed with respect to that motion.

THE COURT: All right. For the benefit of observers, press and the public, let me just tell you what has taken the time this morning. Both the parties and I have, in order to expedite the voir dire process, taken a second to look at the questionnaires and tried to determine where voir dire is really necessary and where it may not be necessary, and we've reduced the number of voir dire jurors as a result of our review of the questionnaires themselves. This is something that perhaps we can do to, as I say, expedite things. I just wanted to explain that to people who may be wondering why we're slow getting started this morning.

We're going to call the remaining people who will be questioned into the box now and I'll give them the preliminary instructions, so...

THE COURT: All right. You may all be seated.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.