Charlotte, N.C. ? Jury duty no longer is reserved for the huddled masses.

Oprah Winfrey’s stint on a murder trial last week highlighted the democratization of the selection process, where more A-list executives, celebrities and prominent people are called to civic service.

As a rule, however, lawyers from the Carolinas to California generally eschew selecting powerful personalities for juries. A person such as Winfrey can mesmerize fellow jurors.

“You want followers, not leaders,” says George Laughrun, a Charlotte, N.C., defense attorney with Goodman Carr Laughrun Levine & Murray. “You run the risk of the famous juror eclipsing the gravitas of the case.”

Moreover, many say they wouldn’t select chief executives, given society’s frosty posture toward corporate America.

“A CEO may anger other jurors,” says Charlotte defense attorney James Wyatt, noting some may view the occasion as a social equalizer to take the exec down a peg.

Anti-corporate bias among jurors has doubled over the last 20 years, according to research at Trial Behavior Consulting in San Francisco.

Charlotte defense attorneys Laughrun and Wyatt have had powerful figures on juries. Laughrun recalls a drunken driving case where then-U.S. Atty. Mark Calloway sat on the jury. Laughrun’s client lost.

Wyatt notes that U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn sat on the jury of a capital murder sentencing case three years ago. Wyatt prevailed.

There was a time when many courts exempted CEOs, lawyers and others from jury duty.

Star-studded New York state passed a jury reform law in 1995 that eliminated exemptions for lawyers and other professionals. Since then, Gov. George Pataki, Woody Allen and Spike Lee have been called, but none served.

Last week, the Chicago jury on which Winfrey served deliberated for more than two hours before convicting 27-year-old Dion Coleman of first-degree murder in the 2002 shooting death of Walter Holley, 23.

Winfrey later told reporters that the case was “an eye-opener” and that her peers on the jury “have taken to heart this decision.”

Fellow juror Suzanne Goodman apparently didn’t get the memo.

“It was a lot of fun,” Goodman told The Associated Press. “It was like being on her show.”