Potential jurors in Fort Dix terrorism case questioned on attitudes toward religion, military

StarTribune ^ | 10/7/08 | GEOFF MULVIHILL , Associated Press

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

CAMDEN, N.J. - Prospective jurors discussed their attitudes toward religion and immigrants Tuesday as a complex process began to seat a jury in the case of five men accused of planning to attack Fort Dix.

Lawyers asked questions of 29 potential jurors Tuesday morning, examining whether they could be fair even if they thought Islam encouraged violence or they had family in the military.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Muslims are the latest protected class in the US of A...

[Publius6961]

Prospective jurors discussed their attitudes toward religion and immigrants Tuesday as a complex process began to seat a jury in the case of five men accused of planning to attack Fort Dix.

I don't know when our country got its "National Lobotomy," but I would dearly love an answer.

As I understand common sense, when our Constitution was ratified, "a jury of his peers" did not mean that muderers must be judged by murderers, rapists by rapists, thieves by thieves, or muslims by other muslims (or their sympathizers).
I understood that by peers, it refers to the community where the crime occured.
When did that change? I am sure it crept up on everyone, it did not (could not) happen all at once.

To all the legal types out there, whether academics or practicing defense attorneys, can you please point me to an authoritative, respected book discussing the remarkable historic transformation into the mind-boggling application that the safeguard has degenerated to?

This whole "change of venue" thing baffles me.

Thanks in advance.

[El Gato]

This nonsense of disqualifying jurors who any opinion, or worse yet first hand knowledge of most anything has got to stop.

It's gotten to a point, where a juror who is a PhD physicist can't explain to the rest of the jury why something alleged by one side or the other is physically impossible, without risking a mistrial, or worse, turning the proper outcome of the trial on its head upon appeal. That could go either way, either defense or prosecution could have alleged the impossible. (But of course only in the case of the guilty defendant who alleged the impossible, would it be overturned on appeal).