Jury selection will continue this week in the trial of two men accused of beating a co-worker to death in 2012. It’s the first real test of Unalaska’s new year-long jury pool, which took effect in January.

Statewide jury coordinator Patricia Young says the change has been good news in a town where potential jurors don’t always stay put -- and where big trials aren’t very common.

"It’s a high-profile case," she says. "You know you’re going to need a lot of people because the potential for a lot of people to be excused is great. A lot of people know about the case."

The year-long pool is supposed to help with that. It’s used in towns with fewer than 2,000 potential jurors. Young says it lets the court call more jurors for the whole term, without using up as much of the total pool.

Under Unalaska’s old system, the court summoned about 300 new jurors every three months. But Young says residents’ unusual schedules meant not enough of them were usually in town for trials.

"The trial rate in Unalaska has been relatively small, but we were increasingly dealing with your very transient population," she says. "It was causing significant issues in trying to make sure that you have enough jurors at any given point."

Plus, those jurors can’t be called again for a year after they’re summoned. Young says the three-month system used up as many as two thirds of Unalaska’s 1,800-person pool in a year.

Under the new system, Unalaska’s court called just 600 jurors for 2014 -- enough to cover all the trials, with plenty of jurors left over for next year.

Still, the new system’s meant a bit of a learning curve for Unalaska. When the beating trial began last week, more than 150 jurors were called to the tiny courthouse to be interviewed. They spilled out of the lobby and into the street.

Next year, court clerk Roxanna Winters says she might call smaller groups at a time -- though that would mean a longer selection process. So far, though, she thinks the year-long pool is a big improvement on the old system.

Winters says the beating trial should have its jury by the end of the week.