"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding 12 men every day who don't know anything and can't read. -- Mark Twain, July 4, 1873

We must seat an impartial jury for the trial of Richard Poplawski, charged with killing three Pittsburgh police officers on the first Saturday morning of this month.

Mr. Poplawski waived his preliminary hearing yesterday, and he will be formally arraigned June 1. Meantime, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning has ordered everyone to shut up.

Judge Manning put it more eloquently, though no less forcefully, saying officials can discuss this case only if the information doesn't have a "substantial likelihood" of affecting the legal process.

To say that the people of Western Pennsylvania have a keen interest in this case would be the understatement of our young century. The number who have been moved to tears by the cold-blooded murders in Stanton Heights would likely fill Heinz Field.

In weighing the public's right to know against the right of an accused person to a fair trial, Judge Manning has now put his judicial thumb rather heavily on the latter. But as he tries to tamp down the publicity, that only raises a question that has been bedeviling this republic for a very long time.

If you could find 12 people in this county who did not know a thing about these killings, would they be fit to judge anything? Could they even be counted on to find their way to the right courtroom each day?

"I desire to tamper with the jury law," Twain said. "I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers."

That's rough, but then Twain wrote that in "Roughing It" and he was never one to refrain from exaggeration in pursuit of a chuckle or a point. He certainly was right to take issue with any notion of law that says a person must be entirely ignorant of a case in order to be fair.

Harry Litman, former U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, said that in theory a lawyer might want a juror who knows nothing about the case, so that he will be focused solely on the law, evidence and lawyer's arguments. But there are cases, such as this one, where such a person may be very hard to find.

If you manage to find someone "so clueless they don't know anything about this case or the O.J. case or the Unabomber case," Mr. Litman said, "you might be getting a person who is not connected or engaged, can't represent the conscience of the community, isn't really a 'peer' in the sense of a jury of one's peers."

So it's not often possible or even desirable, he said, to find jurors in high-profile cases who don't know anything about the case. The challenge is rather finding jurors an attorney can trust to put aside whatever preconceptions they might have.

I won't fault Mr. Poplawski's public defender, Lisa G. Middleman, for seeking this gag order. It's her task to vigorously defend her client, and she told me yesterday she doesn't believe a juror need be entirely ignorant of this case to be impartial.

Nor would I go to the mat with Judge Manning in any legal argument as I'm sure he'd beat me with his entire legal library tied behind his back. I applaud him for not imposing the gag order until after the memorial services for the fallen officers, recognizing our region first needed to come together and mourn.

Let's hope he is equally judicious in interpreting his prohibition against officers speaking to the press, and that officers will be comfortable sharing what is still public record. Because there is only so much a judge can do for a man whose mother called the cops on him when that call led to the brutal killing of three good men who came to help.

Mr. Poplawski will have justice, but so must Officers Eric G. Kelly, Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul J. Sciullo II.