A jury pool 3,000-deep for Padilla

The jury selection process in the terrorism trial of alleged Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla will begin next month with an unusually large group, 3,000 Miami-area residents, a judge said.

Court officials had intended to start with a jury pool of 2,300 -- several hundred more than other recent high-profile cases -- but U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke increased it to 3,000, because “we are now talking about a trial on a global scale.”

Cooke said jury duty letters would go out in mid-November to start a process to ultimately produce 12 jurors and several alternates. The trial of Padilla and two co-defendants, scheduled to begin Jan. 22, is expected to last several months.