On one side is a superstar singer with millions of fans worldwide. On the other is his longtime nemesis, a district attorney who now has a young witness apparently ready to testify.

Jury selection will begin today in Michael Jackson’s child molestation case.

Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville summoned 300 people to court Monday for the first round of jury selection. Another 300 are to follow on Tuesday, with a final 150 scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. From that pool, the judge hopes to find 12 jurors and eight alternates.

After three days of preliminaries, lawyers will be given time to study prospective jurors’ written answers and return to court next week to excuse those who have strong views that clearly exclude them from service. The lawyers will then begin questioning in depth those still in the jury pool.

The challenge facing the court is not to find jurors ignorant of the case but to find those who say they can put aside everything they have heard and look at the evidence as if they had heard nothing.

“This is an extremely high profile case locally, nationally and internationally,” Jackson’s lawyer, Thomas Mesereau Jr., said in a recent motion. “The publicity is so widespread that there is no jurisdiction in the state or perhaps in this country that would afford Mr. Jackson a trial in front of jurors who have not been influenced by the publicity.”

Source: Associated Press