NEW YORK (AP) — Who hasn't heard of Martha?

The judge in the Martha Stewart trial appears to have given up on finding 12 people completely unfamiliar with the gracious-living guru, zeroing in on those who say they can be fair despite the heavy pretrial publicity.

A transcript of the first day of juror questioning in Stewart's stock-fraud trial shows U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asking potential jurors whether they can decide the case solely on the evidence.

Cedarbaum has fretted publicly about the heavy press coverage of the trial, and many potential jurors in the case appear to be vaguely familiar with the case, if only its celebrity defendant.

"I mean, it's been impossible to totally not hear about the case," one potential juror told the judge, according to the transcript. "It has been everywhere."

The judge followed up: "And you have no problem following exactly the judge's statement of the law?" The juror answered, "Right."

The judge told the potential juror, a housewife and former lawyer, that she may wind up on the jury, depending in part on whether she can find someone to watch her 13-year-old child.

Stewart, 62, is accused of lying to the government and her own shareholders about why she sold ImClone Systems stock in late 2001, just before it plummeted on a negative government review of an ImClone cancer drug.

Hundreds of people have filled out jury questionnaires in the case, and the judge is asking many of them follow-up questions this week, in front of Stewart and co-defendant Peter Bacanovic, in private sessions in her robing room.

The judge is said to want about 50 jurors for the next phase, when lawyers can voluntarily strike them one by one if they believe they might lean toward the opposing side.

After questioning Tuesday and Wednesday, about two dozen have been cleared to advance. The questioning was to continue Thursday.

One potential juror answered in the questionnaire that he did not trust Stewart. In a follow-up interview, he told the judge: "Sometimes people that are — that are powerful are not so trustworthy." He was disqualified.

A woman reported that she worked on a trading desk at a securities firm where the Stewart case is talked about "very regularly" and said she would have trouble ignoring news reports about the trial.

The media are relying on transcripts of juror questioning, provided a day late by the court and with names removed, because the jury has barred reporters from watching the process that is usually held in open court.

Stewart says she and Bacanovic, her former stockbroker, had a standing order to sell Stewart's 3,928 shares of ImClone stock when its price fell below $60 per share.

But the government says Stewart sold after she was tipped that her friend Sam Waksal, the founder of ImClone, was trying to sell his shares. Waksal later admitted having advance word of the government decision on the drug.