Jury Selected for Miller’s 2nd Trial on Spy Charges

After days of courtroom bickering about the jury selection process and the difficulties of finding qualified jurors willing to serve on a time-consuming case, a 12-member jury was finally selected Friday for the second espionage trial of former FBI Agent Richard W. Miller.

Both sides appeared to be unhappy with the composition of the jury.

Prosecutors had hoped to include defense industry and aerospace workers; the defense wanted college-trained professionals. However, neither group was included in the final panel, and both sides made it clear that they thought the panel was not representative of the overall potential jury pool in the Los Angeles area.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner put the blame partly on the unwillingness of many qualified potential jurors to make financial or other personal sacrifices to serve on juries in lengthy trials. The Miller retrial is expected to last at least 10 weeks.

Several aerospace employees were disqualified, after saying they would resent serving on the jury because their firms would only pay their salaries for 20 to 25 days of jury duty, and Bonner told U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon that he was “troubled” by their attitude.

Bonner asked Kenyon if he could appeal directly to the potential jurors’ employers to ask if there might be some flexibility in the various policies on jury pay. He dropped the request, however, after Kenyon questioned how he could make such inquiries without creating undue pressure on the firms to make their employees available for jury duty.

“I don’t particularly like the attitude, either, but you’re going to find it in a lot of people,” Kenyon said.

Bonner frequently urged Kenyon to keep aerospace workers on the jury panel. However, when he repeatedly protested one of Kenyon’s decisions to disqualify an aerospace worker, Kenyon warned him to drop the subject.

“Don’t argue that. I don’t appreciate that,” Kenyon said, rising from the bench. “It’s very near to being contemptuous.”

While Bonner and Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman protested the unwillingness of defense industry employees to accept jury duty in the retrial of the first FBI agent ever accused of espionage, Miller’s lawyers, Stanley Greenberg and Joel Levine, offered an opposite complaint.

Levine moved for a mistrial on grounds that the court was “insensitive” to an alleged prosecution plan of packing the panel with jurors who would be anxious to reach a quick decision--of guilty--so that they could go back to their jobs and families.

Concern Expressed

“After 10 weeks,” Levine said, “the jurors are going to be resentful. We are concerned and afraid the jurors will direct their resentment to Mr. Miller.”

The jury that was finally selected included a country music radio producer, a Compton housewife with three children, a teacher’s aide, a hospital technician, a retired mathematics teacher and a marketing research expert for Toyota.

Miller, 49, was arrested Oct. 2, 1984, on charges of conspiring to pass secret FBI documents to the Soviet Union. His first trial ended in a deadlocked jury last November. Opening statements in the retrial are scheduled to begin Tuesday.