HUNTSVILLE — Nearly 100 potential jurors fidgeted Tuesday in Circuit Court as Phyllis Villines, more like a bingo caller than circuit clerk, drew names from a spinning cylinder and called them into the jury box.
Some of them were dismissed, one by one, because of a family relationship or an opinion.
Those in the courtroom expelled a collective sigh of relief when attorneys ceased with their own expulsions and settled on the 12 who will determine the fate of Clint Eugene Phillips, whose capital-murder trial began with jury selection Tuesday morning.
In the musty, drab courtroom, the diversity of the potential jurors' appearances provided the color.
They wore all shades of green, ranging from key lime blouses to the olive drab of camouflage overalls. Button-fly jeans commingled with button-down shirts.
There were redheads and gray heads; people with big hair and small hair, and some with no hair at all. One young man with a pierced lip had green hair with fluorescent orange stripes.
There was only one oxygen tank, used by Earl "Junior" McKnight, the aging father of Billie Jean Phillips, who was bludgeoned and strangled to death inside her rural Alabam home in 1994. McKnight sat in the back of the courtroom, surrounded by three rows of the victim's extended family.
Directly across the aisle, three rows of Clint Phillips' family sat impassively, showing emotion mostly during breaks when they approached the defendant and gave him hugs or cigarettes.
Attorneys already had whittled a jury pool of 300 down to 120 based on questionnaire results that exposed obvious biases. Villines asked about 100 of these to show up Tuesday morning.
Circuit Judge William Storey began the trial by questioning the potential jurors en masse, asking anyone who had read newspaper accounts and discussed the case to stand up.
The entire courtroom began laughing. In close-knit Madison County, population 14,243, everyone knows something about the case.
But Storey asked if the potential jurors could remain impartial and set aside previously held opinions. Some said they could serve as a blank slate, while others said they'd always be thinking about what they assumed to be true in the nine-year-old slaying.
"If somebody says, 'Don't think about zebras,' I'll think about zebras," said Rebecca Kruse, who was dismissed.
Other potential jurors, like Denise Whitewolf, seemed to be looking for any way out of the courtroom. Whitewolf mumbled quietly about her prejudices until Storey asked her to speak up.
Whitewolf found her voice just as she hit upon the right excuse.
"Right now, I don't think I could do it - being pregnant and all," she said.
After Storey dismissed about a dozen jurors "for cause," Villines began rolling her cylinder and inviting the roulette winners into the jury box.
Prosecuting Attorney Terry Jones and defense attorney Joel Huggins then questioned potential jurors directly. While a jury of peers may be easy to find in Madison County, Jones and Huggins found that an impartial jury is more elusive.
Gary Ogden was dismissed after he said he might have problems convicting someone of capital murder, given the only possible sentence - life without parole. Jones has agreed not to seek the death penalty.
"I didn't know if I was ready to send somebody to prison for the rest of their life," said Ogden, who played Little League ball with Clint Phillips.
Jerry Cartmell was dismissed after he said he was friends with both sides. He said both Clint Phillips and his father worked on barn construction on his ranches.
Outside the courtroom, Cartmell admitted to having an opinion about the case.
"I just see Clint sitting down there and... I don't know," he said. "I got a lot of information. I can't say what I want to say."
Jones seemed to express the essential frustration of the selection process when he addressed one juror.
"Mr. Lewis," Jones said, "I remember on your questionnaire that you said you've had a relationship with everyone on this case."
While Huggins seemed to seek Madison County old-timers, Jones tried to impanel newcomers to the county who might not know much about the trial.
Both sides, however, asked potential jurors if they could return to the community comfortable with a verdict. Huggins asked if jurors if they could "hold their heads up at the coffee shop."
Edna McKnight, Billie Jean Phillips' mother, said she understands the jurors' predicament.
"They're afraid of hurting one side or the other. It's a real bad position to be in," she said.
Kathleen Burris, who said she worked with Clint Phillips' mother and grandmother at the Butterball Turkey factory, seemed to take the intense questioning to heart.
"Can I go home now?" she asked after she was dismissed, her eyes red and watering.
"I may pass out," she said, outside the courtroom. "It would've been better, I think, if they had it out of the county."
After attorneys settled on a jury of eight women and four men, Storey dismissed the rest of the pool. They quietly filed out to jam-packed parking lots.
Debbie Grube, a manager at Arvest Bank next door to the courthouse, stood guard over her parking lot with two new signs, constructed just for the trial, that visitors not doing banking that they will be towed.
"The town of Huntsville just isn't quite large enough for this," she said.