New York ? Lawyers picking through jury questionnaires for the Martha Stewart trial face the tricky task of predicting how potential panelists might lean based on answers to queries that could be as simple as what their favorite TV show is.

The process falls somewhere between psychological analysis and mind-reading, legal experts say. And the stakes are huge: The 12 people ultimately selected will decide whether Stewart lands in prison or goes free.

While the questionnaire filled out Tuesday by hundreds of potential jurors is being kept secret, legal experts said Stewart’s defense team likely used it to look for jurors who are financially sophisticated and hold high-paying jobs.

Those jurors could be more likely to believe Stewart’s account that she had a pre-existing order to sell her ImClone Systems stock when it fell to $60 a share in 2001 — the key to her defense, the experts said.

Such a juror might be “prepared in this age where corporate scandals are on everyone’s mind to view these acts objectively and independent of the climate,” said Barry Berke, a white-collar defense attorney in New York.

The government claims Stewart was tipped that ImClone founder Sam Waksal and his family were trying to unload ImClone shares. Stewart sold hers on Dec. 27, 2001, a day before a negative government report about an ImClone drug damaged its stock price.

Stewart is accused of lying to the government, and deceiving her own shareholders, about the circumstances of the sale. Stewart avoided $45,673 in losses on the shares by selling before the bad news was made public.

Lawyers for the government and the defense will pore over the questionnaires, targeting jurors they believe are biased — and making notes on which might be advantageous to their side.

The questionnaire is expected to cover obvious sources of bias for jurors, such as those who might own stock in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the media company Stewart still partly controls.

Martha Stewart and her lawyer John Tigue leave U.S District Court in this Nov. 18 file photo. Hundreds of potential jurors in the Martha Stewart trial filed into a federal courthouse Tuesday to fill out questionnaires drawn up by prosecutors and the homemaking maven's defense team. Filling out the questionnaires marked the beginning of jury selection in Stewart's trial on charges she lied to the government about her sale of ImClone Systems stock in 2001.