Jury Pool 3,000 Deep For Padilla

The jury selection process in the terrorism trial of alleged Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla will begin next month with an unusually large group, 3,000 Miami-area residents, a judge said.

Court officials had intended to start with a jury pool of 2,300 several hundred more than other recent high-profile cases but U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke increased it to 3,000, because “we are now talking about a trial on a global scale.”

Cooke said jury duty letters would go out in mid-November to start a process to ultimately produce 12 jurors and several alternates. The trial of Padilla and two co-defendants, scheduled to begin Jan. 22, is expected to last several months.