Federal prosecutors are asking that an anonymous jury be impaneled in Roanoke next month to hear the case of William A. White, a neo-Nazi leader charged with making Internet threats.

Should the unusual request be approved, jurors would be assigned numbers so their names and street addresses would remain a secret, even to the lawyers involved in the case.

Prosecutors say White's ardent advocacy of white supremacy motivated him to threaten and intimidate people across the country -- making him a danger not just to the community, but to anyone selected to serve on his jury.

"Jurors in this case are going to hear extensive evidence of how the defendant targets individuals who 'cross' him, by publicizing their personal information on various hate [Web] sites," a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court states.

"Any potential juror could quickly conclude that their personal safety would be at risk were they to serve in this case."

Although White, 32, has a long history of lacing his online commentary with racial epithets, personal attacks and death wishes, he is expected to argue at his trial that he never crossed the line between free speech and illegal threats.

Keeping the identity of jurors a secret is often reserved for the most dangerous of defendants, such as terrorists and mobsters.

Ray Ferris, who represents White along with Roanoke lawyer David Damico, said the two could not recall an anonymous jury trial in the Roanoke Valley in their combined experience of more than 50 years.

Ferris declined to comment on the details of the government's motion.

While jurors are not routinely identified during the course of a trial, their names are sometimes mentioned during jury selection, and their identities and addresses are part of the court record.

White's trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 9. He is charged with seven counts of threatening people by e-mail, telephone or on his now-defunct Web site, overthrow.com.

Prosecutors say White selected targets from Virginia Beach to Canada, usually out of anger over something they said or did that offended his neo-Nazi beliefs. In some of the cases, the government contends, White has shown a willingness to interfere with the judicial process that supports its request for an anonymous jury.

For example, after learning that a group of black residents of an apartment complex had filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against their landlord in Virginia Beach, White sent them letters emblazoned with a swastika.

The letters were addressed to "whiny Section 8 n------," and warned the residents that the white community's "patience with you and the government that coddles you runs thin."

Prosecutors are also citing a case in which White posted the name and address of a man in Chicago who was the foreman of a jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist.

But in that case, a judge dismissed a charge that White encouraged violence against the juror. Because White's actions did not amount to provoking imminent illegal conduct, the judge ruled, they were protected by his First Amendment rights.

White has also raised a free-speech defense in Roanoke, asking Judge James Turk to dismiss the charges because his online statements and e-mails were political speech.

"White did not hide behind anonymity; he always gave his true name and accurate contact information, suggesting an attempt to engage in political discourse," a motion to dismiss the charges states.

White, the so-called commander of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, has been in jail for all but five days since his arrest in October 2008.