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THE STANDARD FOR POTENTIAL jurors, no matter where the case is being tried and no matter how serious the charges, is always supposed to be the same:

Any potential juror who admits that he or she or they can’t put aside their personal feelings and biases and apply the law impartially is summarily dismissed, no parting gifts, thanks for showing up and at least trying to do your civic duty, good-bye, drive home safely.

“If they do promise to be impartial,” Norma Banks has told me, “then it becomes our job to decide which ones are trying too hard to get into the box and which ones are trying too hard to run the hell away from it.”

Some, I know from my own experience, are just pissed they got called, don’t want to be bothered, are more than willing to do everything except direct-message the judge to tell him or her or them that there’s no way they can be impartial, just because sitting through a long trial seems to them like doing hard time of their own.

Through it all, though, the charge from the law for Katherine Welsh and me is the same, despite the fact that we have our own, and wildly opposite, agendas, and view the other side as the dark side:

To somehow seat a competent and hopefully diverse jury that properly represents the community and will give the defendant a fair trial and the state an equally fair hearing.

Now, that sounds good and even high-minded. But all trial lawyers, either side of the aisle, know it’s all complete BS. Both Katherine Welsh, repping the state, and me, defending a client who reminds me of every single bad choice I’ve ever made with men in my life, want the same thing in the end.

We want the jury to love us.

We have both been looking for love as we have grinded our way out of the morning and through the lunch recess and into the afternoon. Both Katherine and I have already gone through a handful of peremptory challenges when unable to agree on a candidate, for a whole laundry list of reasons.

I stand now, wearily, and begin questioning a woman from Westbury who runs her own small public relations firm in that town.

She appears to be in her late thirties or perhaps early forties, well dressed, smart.

Her answers to basic questions have been fine and occasionally ironic, first with Katherine Welsh, now with me.

Time for me to get to the money question.

“Just knowing what you know about the case, do you think you’ll be able to give a fair hearing to the facts as they’re presented to you?”

She gives a quick shake of her head.

“Probably not,” she says evenly.

“Would you mind telling the court why?”

“Well, Ms. Smith, it’s probably because the summer before last, your client failed to get me into bed despite relentless efforts, and an even more relentless refusal to take no for an answer,” she says, still not changing the tone of her voice.

Smiling now, rather wickedly, I think. “And then when he couldn’t fuck me, he tried to do the same with my eighteen-year-old daughter. ”

“Okay then,” I say. “Excused.”

As I begin walking back to my table, I am well aware of the slow murmur running through the other potential jurors in the box.

But this one isn’t quite finished.

“Don’t turn your back on me,” she snaps.

I wheel back around.

“You’ve already been excused,” I say.

“Not until I get my money’s worth,” she says. “The good news, or maybe it’s bad news for you, Ms. Smith, is that my daughter and I are still alive, which perhaps cheated you out of the chance to defend the sonofabitch on a couple of more murder raps.”

Judge Horton is banging his gavel now. “Step down, please,” he says.

Finally, the woman does stand up from the witness chair, and begins walking across the courtroom, the sound of her clicking heels suddenly very loud. As she passes my table she slows only long enough to hiss, “Tell him that Missy Werner hopes he rots in hell after he rots in prison.”

I watch her as she keeps going, click-click-click ing her way toward the courtroom’s double doors before she is through them, and gone.

Norma Banks has followed her exit right along with me.

“Good talk,” Norma says.