Can Jurors Be Fair--to Ventura?

It’s no wonder the local media have given it major attention right from that day 13 months ago when Dally vanished from the Target parking lot. Last week, Diana Haun, lover of Dally’s husband Michael, went on trial on murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the case. Michael Dally himself will face similar charges later.

But all that publicity left Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones with a mystery of his own: Where to find a panel of jurors untainted by preformed opinions about the case?

In what seemed like a Solomonic move, Judge Jones looked north. Don’t move the whole trial to Santa Barbara, he decreed, but select a jury of Santa Barbara County residents and bring them to Ventura to hear the case.

If only he had known then what we all know now.

In the five weeks since he chose that apparently sensible compromise, we have learned--thanks to a no doubt rigorous academic study by a UC Santa Barbara sociology prof, relayed in an insufferably nose-in-the-air newspaper column--that the average resident of Santa Barbara apparently assumes this sort of thing goes on all the time in Ventura County.

If study and column can be believed, Santa Barbarans practically stop for tetanus shots each time they set out to sneak a visit to the Price Club in Oxnard.

So it’s no wonder Judge Jones is finding Santa Barbara jurors reluctant to sit on this case. Ride in an air-conditioned bus 30 miles down the lovely coastal freeway each morning for a couple of months? Better make it a limo, and make sure the croissants are fresh-baked and the coffee is Starbucks.

If only Judge Jones had known about this study sooner, he could have cast his net southward rather than north. Prospective jurors from Los Angeles County would instantly have recognized the opportunity that awaits those lucky enough to hear this case:

Screenplay, babe, screenplay!