ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Elizabeth Brown (from left), John Richmond and Cindy Chung are part of the prosecution team in the case against Bill White at the Poff Federal Building on day one of his trial.

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Hogeboom is a prosecution attorney in the case against Bill White at the Poff Federal Building in Roanoke.

Race became an issue right from the start in the trial for neo-Nazi William A. White, with prosecutors objecting Wednesday to an all-white jury selected to hear the case.

Of 38 people found qualified to serve on the jury during a daylong selection process, only two were blacks. Both were struck by lawyers for White, an avowed white supremacist charged with making online threats.

In contesting the strikes, Justice Department attorney John Richmond relied on a U.S. Supreme Court case that prohibits the exclusion of jurors based solely on the color of their skin.

But after hearing an explanation from defense attorneys, Judge James Turk ruled they had valid, race-neutral reasons for removing the two potential jurors.

Still, the dispute made it clear just how sensitive each step could be in a trial where the defendant makes no secret of his view that blacks are a subhuman race.

"I just cannot fathom how they ended up with an all-white jury," said Brenda Hale, president of Roanoke's NAACP chapter. "How can you have equal justice in the courtroom when you don't have a representation of the overall community?"

When jury selection began Wednesday morning in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, there were about a half-dozen blacks among the 66 people called as potential jurors.

Unlike cases tried in Roanoke's state court, the panelists came from a wide swath of Southwest Virginia that is predominantly white, rather than just from the city.

Once it became clear who was on trial, several blacks -- and even more whites -- indicated that they disapproved so strongly of White's political views that they could not give him a fair trial.

Those jurors and others were struck for cause. That left a panel of 38 from which both the prosecution and defense were allowed to make peremptory strikes, meaning they did not have to state a reason for excluding a juror.

But after Richmond challenged the defense strikes of the only two remaining blacks, defense attorney Ray Ferris was called upon to explain his reasons.

Ferris said that he and co-counsel David Damico had decided their best strategy for seating a jury in White's case would be to select conservatives over liberals.

In a detailed questionnaire, one of the black panelists had listed President Obama as one of the people she admired most. Ferris said that factored into their decision, not because Obama is black, but because he is liberal.

Another reason for striking the juror, Ferris said, was because she had previously served on a jury that convicted a defendant, calling it a positive experience.

As for the second black juror excluded by the defense, Ferris noted that the man, an employee of a cable television station, reported that he often dealt with dissatisfied customers. That was a concern for the defense because one of the charges against White alleges that he threatened and tried to extort a bank employee whose service he was unhappy with.

Ferris also cited the man's equivocating responses to questions about whether he would be influenced by the word n----- in testimony. White frequently used the racial slur in online posts that will be a key part of the prosecution's case.

"I had a very strong feeling that he couldn't put race aside in this case," Ferris said of the juror.

After finding that the reasons for striking both prospective jurors were acceptable, Turk denied a motion from Richmond to have them returned to the panel.

When the 14 jurors -- two alternates were selected for a trial expected to last 10 days -- return to court today, they will hear opening statements from both sides.

White, the commander of a neo-Nazi group based in Roanoke, is charged with using e-mail, the telephone and his now-defunct Web site to threaten, intimidate or extort about a half-dozen people across the country, usually because of something they said or did that ran counter to his racist views.

In warning potential jurors of the racially charged testimony they would hear, the attorneys asked them about their views on everything from white supremacy groups to Adolf Hitler to swastikas.

One man said he had a swastika tattooed on his left leg. He was not selected.