Do you think preachers are God’s messengers on earth and can do no wrong? Or are you more inclined to believe that they are so-called hypocritical charlatans in the mold of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard and Walker Railey?

If attorneys are doing their jobs, almost anyone with such extreme beliefs in either direction likely will be excluded from criminal juries.

When the criminal defendant is a preacher, politician or police officer — occupations that elicit strong emotions in a number of areas — attorneys sometimes spend extra time during jury selection trying to find out prospective jurors’ attitudes about that and related topics.

That likely will be the case when former Central Texas minister Matt Baker stands trial next month in the April 2006 death of his wife, Kari, the mother of his two daughters.

Baker, 37, has said his wife died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and that she was despondent over the death of a daughter.

Kari’s family and friends contend that she was looking forward to starting a new job and was not depressed, although she had confided that she feared her husband was having an affair and was trying to kill her after finding crushed pills in a bottle in his briefcase.

Prosecutors and investigators contend that the pastor and chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth was having an affair with a young woman he met at Crossroads Baptist Church near Lorena. They say he gave the woman Kari’s cell phone within days of her death and that they were seen looking for engagement rings not long after that.

Baker, who moved to his hometown of Kerrville, vehemently denies these accusations and has addressed most of the allegations in a series of media interviews his attorney, Guy James Gray, arranged in his Kerrville office.

So how much of an effect will Baker’s profession have on potential jurors in Waco’s 19th State District Court? In a close, circumstantial case, will they give Baker the benefit of the doubt because he is a preacher? As a trained public speaker, he is more eloquent than most who sit in the defendant’s chair. Can he persuade the jury that he did not kill his wife? Or will jurors treat him more harshly than others if they are convinced the pastor has fallen from grace?

Waco attorney Doyle Young has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in religion, a master of divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, a doctorate in church history and a law degree from Baylor University. He taught at the seminary 11 years before going to law school. He said the fact that Baker is a preacher could cut both ways.

“I think Mr. Baker, from the pictures I have seen, is a clean-cut guy, a minister. I would think he would want church people on his jury. They would be likely to believe him, I would think,” Young said. “The district attorney would be wanting people who have strong feelings about church, but maybe those who have been disaffected with the church, maybe even kind of hostile to the church, those who easily could believe that a preacher could have done something bad or those who have seen a minister do something really bad.”

Young and Jim Wren, a Baylor Law School professor who teaches jury selection as part of the school’s touted practice court, both agree that lawyers on both sides of the Baker case need to engage the jury panel in an open, frank discussion about religion, values and preachers.

Jury selection, Wren said, is more about “jury deselecting,” meaning that instead of picking jurors you want, it is more important to cast off the jurors who could really hurt your case.

“You want the truth, but you don’t challenge their beliefs,” Wren said. “I just want to know about it so I can make good decisions on who ought to serve on a particular jury. Someone may be a great juror for a trial down the hall, but not particularly for this one. The main thing is to get folks talking about the topic you are concerned about.”

In a possession of child pornography case tried in Waco earlier this month involving part-time Elm Mott Church of Christ minister Henry Edgington, the subject of his profession never came up during the jury-selection process.

Edgington, who had images of young girls he downloaded from the Internet, said he collected the photos as part of his crusade to rid the Internet of child pornography. He said he was going to turn his materials over to U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, to try to strengthen legislation to ban such sites.

His trial ended in a hung jury and mistrial. Edgington admitted possession of the illicit materials but said he was on a legislative mission. Would jurors have been unable to reach a verdict if Edgington had been a two-time convicted burglar on the same mission?

Edgington’s attorney, Seth Sutton, said he didn’t think it was necessary to quiz the jury about Edgington’s profession because he didn’t download the images at church and his mission didn’t involve his profession.

“I think him being a minister definitely gave him more credibility, and we definitely brought that out in the case. The pastor testified that he was on a mission, and it was not an issue that I felt we needed to voir dire on.” Sutton said. “A preacher being charged with an offense is a real dramatic, scandalous, made-for-TV-kind of situation, and there is a lot of fear that potential jurors can get caught up in all of that and lose sight of the case. Those are the things that I look for.”

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737