UNION, S.C. (7/14/95) -- The prosecutor's failure to put David Smith on a list of potential witnesses nearly created havoc Thursday in jury selection for the death penalty trial of Smith's ex-wife.

The oversight led Judge William Howard to re-question 10 members of the jury pool, including five people already chosen for Susan Smith's murder trial, in a series of jury-related surprises.

Among those developments:

The jurors were moved from a Union motel that they found unsuitable to the Holiday Inn in Spartanburg.

Police had to find five people already dismissed from the jury pool for additional questioning by Judge Howard.

The one additional juror selected Thursday is the wife of Union Police Chief Russell Roark.

That means the court still must find 12 jurors, including six alternates, before the panel can be sworn in and opening statements and testimony begun.

Thursday began routinely with more potential jurors summoned for questioning. But in the course of one morning examination, a man mentioned that he had been with David Smith on a particular night.

That's when court officials realized that Smith had been left off the list of more than 100 potential witnesses and no one in the jury pool had been asked about associations with him.

Susan Smith's lead defense lawyer, David Bruck, told Judge Howard that the man's statement raised some concerns. Bruck wondered if he might have used one of his 10 strikes to eliminate a juror who could have been dismissed by the judge because of a relationship with David Smith.

So during the lunch break, Howard sent the police scrambling to find the five people Bruck had already struck. They brought them back into court to ask them about any relationships they might have with David Smith.

As it turned out, none of them knew him. But the judge was prepared to give Bruck an additional strike for each one who said he knew Smith as even an acquaintance.

Howard also had to bring back the five jurors who had already been seated and ask them whether they knew Smith. They did not.

Prosecutor Tommy Pope said it was an oversight when he left David Smith's name off the list of potential witnesses. Smith was such an integral part of the case that it slipped his mind, he said. "There was no deception or anything like that."

Pope said he was relieved that none of the people already questioned knew Smith. "Anything that would have slowed down the case or given the defense more strikes would have been a problem for the case, but it was dealt with and the judge did it fairly."

Bruck rejected two prospective jurors found qualified by the judge Thursday, leaving him just four more strikes. Pope rejected one, leaving him two strikes.

The juror selected Thursday is a middle-aged white woman.

Bruck said he wasn't worried that she would be biased against Susan Smith, who has been charged with murder for letting her car roll into John D. Long Lake with her two little boys, Michael and Alex, inside.

"In this case, I don't see a connection to law enforcement as weighing against Susan," he said.

The jury now includes two white men, two white women and two black men. Forty people have been questioned by the lawyers, leaving about 65 more potential jurors.

Judge William Howard excused five potential jurors Thursday after they said they could not vote for the death penalty under any circumstances.

Bruck, a nationally recognized death penalty defense lawyer, and Pope said after court that they remained confident a jury could be selected without having to call another pool. "But I have to admit there are an extraordinary number of people saying they are death penalty opponents," Bruck said.

At least 15 of the 40 potential jurors interviewed by lawyers and the judge have now been dismissed for that reason.

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