A judge agreed with attorneys that it may take a lot of work to find four unbiased jurors in the case of a 70-year-old Orem woman who was arrested in a dispute over her brown lawn.

Orem city prosecutor Andrew Peterson and defense attorney Paige Benjamin met with Judge John Backlund at Orem's 4th District Court on Monday to discuss jury selection in the trial of Betty Perry. Backlund agreed to an expanded jury pool, which Peterson requested to because of the publicity and headlines that Perry's case has received.

"We will have an expanded jury pool," Backlund said.

Peterson said he wanted a pool of 125 prospective jurors from which to select a four-person jury. Trials for class B misdemeanors usually start with 20-person jury pools, but Peterson and Benjamin said they would likely need more prospective jurors than that to find four people who have no preconceived notions about the case.

"Because of the interest this case has generated we're going to try to start with a much larger jury pool to be able to eliminate people that have preconceived notions about it or have already made up their minds one way or the another," Peterson said. "That might be too many (potential jurors) but ... we'd rather have too many than too few."

Peterson initially requested the expanded jury pool at Perry's arraignment in October, and filed a motion for an expanded jury pool in late November.

Perry made international headlines in July after an officer with the Orem police Neighborhood Preservation Unit attempted to give her a citation for not watering her brown, dead lawn. According to police, Perry refused to give Officer Jim Flygare her name, and resisted when he attempted to arrest her for it. Superstar Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred is serving as a victims rights advocate for Perry.

Perry's two-day trial on charges of interfering with legal arrest, a class B misdemeanor, and violation of zoning ordinance, a class C misdemeanor, is scheduled to begin on Feb. 11. A final pretrial hearing is scheduled for Feb. 5.

• Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or jduda@heraldextra.com.