Collegiate Times

WASHINGTON ? Testimony will begin next week in the case of the tobacco farmer who drove his tractor onto the National Mall causing three days worth of massive gridlock.

A jury was picked Wednesday, but the judge cited weather concerns caused by Hurricane Isabel for delaying opening statements until Monday.

?I suspect that by this time tomorrow we will be in some sort of weather emergency,? said U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. He also immediately excluded six people from the jury pool who were in some way directly inconvenienced by the actions which led to Dwight Ware Watson?s arrest.

On March 17, Watson, 50, allegedly drove his Jeep across federal parkland just west of the Washington Monument and unloaded his John Deere tractor from a flatbed trailer, before driving it into a shallow pond in an area called Constitution Gardens.

U.S. Park Police, heeding Watson?s claim that he had explosives, closed several streets nearby. Traffic backed up through much of Washington and northern Virginia.

Jackson ordered a jury pool of 75 people to appear in his courtroom. He said Tuesday that the large number was an effort to ensure that 12 jurors and two alternates could be selected to hear up to three days of testimony and then decide Watson?s guilt or innocence impartially.

?Many people were inconvenienced by traffic jams, unable to get to work or unable to get home, and faced evacuation from their offices and homes near the Mall,? Jackson said.

Watson is charged with making a false threat to use explosives and damaging federal property with a value in excess of $1,000. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison on each charge. He is acting as his own attorney in the case, though a public defender will assist him.