Prospective Jurors in Smith Trial to Be Queried Alone : Courts: Death penalty views to be polled in the case of a man accused in the kidnap-murder of a Northridge boy, 8.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren ruled Wednesday that prospective jurors in the kidnap-murder trial of Gregory Scott Smith will be questioned individually, not en masse, about their views on the death penalty.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday for Smith, 23, of Canoga Park, who is accused of kidnaping, molesting and strangling 8-year-old Paul Bailly of Northridge, then setting fire to the boy’s body in a field near Simi Valley. If convicted, Smith could be sentenced to death.

Smith’s attorneys have said that if jurors were allowed to hear one another’s views on the death penalty, they would repeat certain answers to get excused from or included on the panel.

“I’m going to be pleading for this young man’s life,” said defense attorney James M. Farley. “I want 12 people up there I can talk to, not 12 people that have made up their minds.”

However, prosecutors argued that Californians voted down individual questioning in June, 1990, when they passed the Crime Victims’ Reform Initiative, Proposition 115.

That initiative, designed to streamline trials, overruled case law that allowed prospective jurors to be questioned individually on death penalty cases, Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris said.

Perren reminded the attorneys that jurors were questioned individually at the start of Smith’s first trial last winter.

“I am mindful of what many of the jurors said during . . . the first go-round,” Perren said. “Many of them said, ‘Wait a minute, I can be fair otherwise, but I want to be sure there’s nothing about child molestation in this case.’ ”

Such answers could color other jurors’ views on the death penalty, Perren said.

A jury was chosen in the first trial, but it ended in mistrial over a conflict of interest before testimony began. Smith’s public defenders at the time had represented a jailhouse informant who told prosecutors that Smith had confessed to some of the events leading up to Paul’s death.