ALEXANDRIA, La. – Jurors were selected and open arguments heard Monday in U.S. District Court on the first day of the trial of Jonesville Mayor Billy Edwards and six others accused of voter fraud.

The trial, which is expected to take about nine days, will resume at 9 a.m. today.

&uot;I’m just glad to get this started,&uot; Edwards said with a smile during a break in Monday’s proceedings. Mike Small, attorney for Edwards and Edwards’ wife, Mary, has postponed the trial twice so staffers could review more than 800 pages of FBI witness accounts.

Billy and Mary Edwards, Police Chief Clyde Walker, Mona &uot;Flapper&uot; Briggs, Henry &uot;Doonie&uot; Brown, Garnet Thompson and Mary Walker face 27 counts of conspiracy, fraudulent voting, vote buying, false information and witness tampering. The charges stem from a Nov. 3, 1998 mayoral election in which Billy Edwards was reelected.

On Sept. 22, a grand jury indicted those defendants and two others, Lola Bowie and Linda Curry. Since Bowie’s lawyer has died, her trial was severed and has not been rescheduled. But Curry, charged with conspiracy, fraudulent voting, vote buying and false information, recently pleaded guilty to only one count and was sentenced to two years probation and a $1,000 fine.

Curry will now testify for the prosecution. Defense attorneys called her &uot;the star witness&uot; out of an estimated 30 witnesses U.S. Attorney Joe Jarzabek could call. And the strategy of the defense — six lawyers for seven clients — emerged early: discredit Curry as a witness who has repeatedly lied in court and will do it again.

Curry said during the trial of a November 1998 election contest brought by Edwards’ opponent, Roosevelt Savage, that she never bought votes but is expected to say during this trial that she did, Small said. &uot;Either she lied then, or she’s lying now,&uot;&160;he said.

The Edwardses never entered into a vote buying agreement and did not even mention doing such a thing, Small said. He added that Curry did not ask the people she drove to the polls to vote for Edwards, and eight of the 10 voted for Savage. &uot;What kind of conspiracy is that?&uot;, Small asked in his opening statement.

But Jarzabek also seemed confident with his office’s case.

&uot;There will be evidence to show that these defendants were involved in hauling voters to the polls and paying them money&uot; to vote for Edwards, Jarzabek said. &uot;All of them were using illegal methods to get Mr. Edwards elected,&uot; mostly by casting fraudulent absentee ballots, he added.

The first four hours of the trial were spent slowly weeding out potential jurors, including a few from the Miss-Lou. Some of those rejected knew defendants or had heard pre-trial publicity. Another was an expectant mother due, in her words, &uot;any day now.&uot;

In the end the 14 jurors, all of them white and most in middle age or older, included nine women and five men. They spent the rest of the day solemnly taking in an hour of opening statements and more than one hour of routine testimony by Sue Manning, registrar of voters for Catahoula Parish.

Manning’s time on the stand was mostly limited to testimony about election deadlines and procedures and the state’s entering of dozens of exhibits ranging from ballots to requests for absentee ballots.

Jurors are not being sequestered but were admonished by Little not to discuss the case with anyone and avoid hearing or reading news reports about the case. Witnesses have been barred from the courtroom except during their testimony.