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Jury selection begins Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, in U.S. District Court in Portland for seven of the Oregon standoff defendants, including Ammon Bundy (clockwise from left), Ryan Bundy, Shawna Cox, Jeff Wayne Banta, Neil Wampler, David Lee Fry and Kenneth Medenbach. (Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.)

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the federal conspiracy case against Ammon Bundy and six others will spend the next three days picking 12 Oregon residents to sit on a jury and eight alternates for a trial that could last two months or more.

The sheer number of defendants, the volume of evidence and the turbulent politics of public land ownership make the trial one of the highest-profile proceedings to land in a Portland courtroom in years.

The federal judge, in an acknowledgement of the complexities of trying so many people at once, has taken remarkable measures to try to manage a case that has riveted the West this winter and for much of this year: the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon.

The court initially sent juror questionnaires to 1,500 people across Oregon. Of those, 350 responded. Lawyers whittled the jury pool last month to 263 based on prospective jurors' answers to everything from what they know about the case to their personal beliefs about the Second Amendment. About 60 people were eliminated for either bias or hardship.

On Wednesday, 30 people from the remaining pool will file into a reconfigured ninth-floor courtroom in the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in downtown Portland for more questions. The court has called another 120 to appear Thursday and Friday - 60 each day.

U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown said she's optimistic that she'll have a jury by the end of the week - with opening statements tentatively set for Tuesday.

"If we're fortunate,'' Brown said during a pretrial conference. "If not, we'll continue until we do.''

The potential jurors will be referred to by numbers in open court for their safety, though the lawyers in the case will have their names.

"Jury selection is something of a misnomer,'' said Jeffrey T. Frederick, director of jury research services for the National Legal Research Group. "It really is jury rejection.''

That's because the practice is meant as a filter, to keep unqualified people from sitting in judgment, he said.

Lawyers can request dismissal of prospective jurors for actual or implied bias if it's clear from their answers that they can't put aside their feelings and apply the law impartially.

The lawyers also can ask to excuse a potential juror with no reason given, what's called a peremptory challenge. It allows each side to dismiss jurors who may be qualified but appear likely to favor the other side. The peremptory challenges can't be used to exclude jurors because of their race or class.

Though federal criminal rules typically grant six peremptory challenges to the government and 10 to the defense, the judge in this case increased the number to account for the eight defendants. She gave the defense three peremptory challenges for each defendant, for a total of 21. Prosecutors will get about a dozen such challenges.

The judge will pose questions to the potential jurors - ones that prosecutors and defense teams forwarded to her in advance. Lawyers can recommend follow-up questions, but again, only the judge will ask them. Though it's not the traditional way of conducting voir dire, it's not unusual in cases with multiple defendants as a way to increase efficiency and avoid improper statements to those summoned.

Both sides probably have done background research on the prospective jurors, examined their online posts and likes on Facebook, for example. In court, lawyers will be taking notes on their answers to the judge's questions.

"They'll be listening very carefully to the answers each is giving, watching their demeanor and just trying to get a sense of the person," said Professor Andrew Chongseh Kim of Concordia University School of Law. "With a case as large as this, that's as politically charged as a case like this, both sides are going to be looking for some indication of potential jurors' political leanings or biases."

Prosecutors likely will be concerned about people who might identify with the defendants or seem sympathetic to their cause, while the defense team likely will try to eliminate jurors who are particularly receptive to the government or law enforcement, said Frederick, of the National Legal Research Group.

Potential jurors will almost certainly face questions on their opinions about federal control of public land, militias, law enforcement, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and whether they believe a person exercising their First or Second Amendment rights must observe lawful limitations on those rights.

Ammon Bundy, the leader of the refuge occupation, has said he and a group of supporters took over the outpost near Burns to protest federal management of the bird sanctuary and wanted to turn it over to locals to run for cattle grazing, mining and logging. Bundy, 41, who had recently moved to Idaho from Arizona, is the son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher famous for a 2014 standoff with federal authorities over grazing rights. The patriarch and his sons also face federal charges in Nevada.

The other Oregon defendants going to trial Wednesday include Bundy's older brother, Ryan Bundy, 43, of Cedar City, Utah; Shawna Cox, 60, of Kanab, Utah; David Lee Fry, 28, of Cincinnati, Ohio; Jeff Wayne Banta, 47, of Elko, Nevada; Neil Wampler, 68, of Los Osos, California; and Kenneth Medenbach, 63, of Crescent, Oregon.

Last month, defense lawyers successfully disqualified potential jurors who wrote that they already believe the Bundy brothers and other defendants are guilty, that the armed takeover was a "stupid and ineffective protest," or "have little sympathy for defendants in this case."

Prosecutors successfully disqualified a potential juror who wrote that while the takeover was occurring, he or she "considered joining them and/or a state or national militia group."

Defense lawyers tried to disqualify those who wrote that they're strong opponents of the Second Amendment. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight argued that potential jurors' opinions of the Second Amendment should be viewed as a separate issue with more weight given to whether they can follow the law in this case

"We're not litigating, 'should the Second Amendment be abolished.' We're not litigating, 'should federal land management be changed,''' Judge Brown advised. "We are not going to solve the underlying policies in this trial.''

Once a jury is selected, the judge intends to provide jurors with a cheat sheet of sorts in a specially designed juror's book that shows each defendant's name beside their photos and definitions of court terms to help with the complex case. The court took defendants' photos Tuesday as appeared for a pretrial conference in trial attire.

"It sounds like the judge is taking special caution to ensure the jury knows who's who. They don't want the jurors to lump the defendants together, as the prosecution will be looking for separate guilty pleas for each defendant," Frederick said.

The judge also said she intends to question each juror on whether they were handed a flier outside court about jury nullification, and to instruct them that they must follow the law even if they disagree with it. Judge Brown said deputy U.S. marshals indicated there may be people outside court distributing such fliers.

Ryan Bundy and Ammon Bundy's lawyer Marcus Mumford objected to the judge's proposed instructions to prospective jurors. Ryan Bundy argued that they will "rob a juror" of the right to serve as a "check and balance'' on the federal government's power.

Mumford asked that the judge not suggest that any of the defendants were responsible for such fliers.

"A jury's place is to be able to use their common sense, their intellect, their conscience, whether the law is proper or not proper,'' Ryan Bundy argued.

Judge Brown dismissed his objection.

"It's overruled," she responded.

Jurors take oaths, the judge said, and she plans to advise them to "follow the law whether they agree with it or not."

"I'm not going to say they have the option,'' the judge said.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian