Grace trial should remain in state

W. R. Grace and Co. wants to make sure it is not Montanans who hear the federal case against the company and its top managers.

Grace wants a judge to say the company can't get a fair trial in this state - the state where more than 1,000 people have been hurt by the company, according to prosecutors.

We think the trial should be heard in Montana, and for good reasons.

Grace is scheduled for a jury trial in September on charges of conspiracy, Clean Air Act violations and other violations that sound like some sterile, bureaucratic malfeasance. It's not. The company and its officials are accused of concealing the danger that vermiculite miners and other people were exposed to in Libby.

Some of those people are sick from asbestos-related lung diseases. Some have died. Others cling to oxygen tanks. There are many for whom traveling to Boise or Salt Lake City, Minneapolis or Denver would be a physical hardship. But that's what attorneys for Grace suggest they do.

Their rationale includes a survey in June that found that more than half of 2,000 Montanans surveyed believe that Grace is guilty, more than a year before the trial begins.

Courts generally don't jump at requests to move trials. Logistically, it would require moving court personnel, witnesses, exhibits and attorneys into some other jurisdiction's facilities. Legally, it challenges the idea that trials should happen wherever it was that a dispute or alleged crime took place. Victims have rights, too, and should be able to see whether and how justice is done. So should the community.

In extreme cases, of course, there are good reasons why a trial must be moved because a jury pool has been contaminated by prejudice, intimidation, economic interest or some other factor.

We don't think that's the case here.

Even assuming that Grace's survey is sound, and we don't, about half the people surveyed said they don't believe in advance that Grace is guilty. That leaves a couple hundred thousand Montanans qualified for the jury pool. Finding 12 or 13 people who could fairly judge the case would have to be easier than the effort of moving the trial out of state.

Indeed, experience shows that it would not be hard at all. In criminal cases in the Flathead where attorneys have unsuccessfully asked that a trial be moved because of pre-trial publicity, an interesting thing has happened when the trial got under way.

Some of the people who initially said they already had an opinion in the case were questioned by lawyers for both sides during the part of the trial known as "voir dire." Often, this process - by which lawyers determine whether an individual is qualified to sit on the jury - is an education for prospective jurors as well as the lawyers. As lawyers probe and try to predict what a complete stranger would do in a jury box, the jurors actually realize they are more fair-minded than they first thought themselves to be.

In the high-profile Ernst murder trial and the Dasen prostitution trial, for instance, many prospective jurors started out saying they had opinions about the cases, but eventually wound up saying they did believe that everyone is entitled to a fair trial and that they could keep an open mind.

We think that's what will happen in Missoula, too, where federal judge Donald Molloy will hear arguments today about whether the trial should be moved.

We hope he doesn't take the drastic step of moving the proceedings to another location, compounding the hardships already suffered by people in failing health and depriving the community of its opportunity to see justice applied.