Finally, and perhaps most troubling of the news stories crawling across my browser:

In Jury Selection for Hate Crime, a Struggle to Find Tolerance

Over the last several days, Justice Robert W. Doyle has heard the typical excuses from potential jurors. One woman mentioned her husband’s medical problems. Another woman complained about her back.

But other prospective jurors, seeking to be excused, have brought up larger issues in the judge’s Long Island courtroom.

A young woman said that her father, a mechanic, has a “huge opinion about illegal immigration,” and that his views on the subject have “become my opinions as well.” A man told Justice Doyle that his house was broken into by illegal immigrants while he was sleeping, a fact that he said would affect his ability to be fair and impartial.

And there were those who took a different view, like the bank worker who said that because her husband is of Mexican and Italian descent, she might have difficulty being fair. And the woman who explained that most of the clients in her job are illegal Latino immigrants.

“I don’t think that because of that they should be killed,” she told Justice Doyle.

The prospective jurors were being asked to sit in judgment in the case involving the killing of Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant stabbed to death in November 2008 in Patchogue, more than an hour’s drive from Manhattan.

Mr. Lucero was attacked by seven teenagers who, the police said, had made a sport out of assaulting Hispanic men, calling it “beaner hopping.” Mr. Lucero’s death prompted widespread outrage and exposed racial tensions in Patchogue, where a number of Latinos came forward after the attack to describe muggings and assaults that had them living in fear.

Now, as Jeffrey Conroy, 19, becomes the first defendant to go on trial in the case, jury selection has proven difficult, in part because of the views on Latino immigration held by some prospective jurors in Suffolk County.

Of all the hot button issues that we’re dealing with, especially in an election year, immigration is I think the most explosive.