PROVIDENCE –– Two years after 421 prospective jurors filled out questionnaires eliciting their opinions about the tragic Station nightclub fire that claimed 100 lives, The Providence Journal’s fight to open those records is bound for the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

In a case with implications for the openness of the jury-selection process, the newspaper has challenged a lower-court ruling denying access to the 32-page questionnaires, which were filled out in anticipation of the trial of former Station owner Michael A. Derderian. The case never went to trial, as Derderian and his brother Jeffrey Derderian entered into plea agreements, but lawyers for The Journal argue that the issue remains relevant to determining what kind of access the public and the press can expect in future cases.

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Dec. 8.

In recent years, judges have used written questionnaires to weed out biases of potential jurors and streamline the selection process in high-profile corruption cases here in Rhode Island and nationally.

But while oral questioning of potential jurors is open, the written questionnaires have not been released. Even though they carried the disclaimer that the answers were not confidential, and “may be included in the public record,” Superior Court Judge Francis P. Darigan denied The Journal’s request to see them. Although the press and the public have “the presumptive right” to see jury questionnaires, Darigan cited “uniquely compelling situations” in sealing them in the Station fire case.

The judge said the prospective jurors were asked for “extremely personal and sensitive” information, including their romantic, criminal and medical histories.

Lawyers for The Journal argued that the prospective jurors’ opinions should be public, since that could have been a factor that motivated the Derderians to plead no contest. Darigan said at the Derderians’ plea hearing that it might have been difficult to seat an impartial jury, noting that lawyers had asked that more than 64 percent of the prospective jurors be dismissed based on their questionnaire responses.

“Constitutional principles,” The Journal argues in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday, “cannot be lost to time-saving measures.”

Lawyers for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch object to the release of the information, arguing that it would make it harder for the state to attract jurors in the future.

“Nobody who unselfishly responds to a jury summons should have to balance their privacy rights, as well as those of their family and friends, against the possibility that intensely personal information will be sought and publicly disseminated,” wrote Rebecca Tedford Partington, a lawyer for the attorney general.

Partington also argued that the case is moot, since the Derderians didn’t go to trial and jury selection was never begun for Michael Derderian.

“The issues in this case, namely, The Journal’s entitlement to personal information about potential jurors (and those people named in the questionnaires) in a trial that never began, are clearly no longer viable,” Partington wrote. “At this point, in this case, this is merely an academic exercise.”

The Journal contends that the matter is not moot, because the case involves “ongoing issues of great public importance” involving the historical tension between the public’s First Amendment right and a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, as well as the privacy interests of would-be jurors asked to determine their fate.

It is important for the Supreme Court to set guidelines, said Journal lawyer Kristin E. Rodgers, citing a case that followed Darigan’s ruling, in which Superior Court Judge Edward C. Clifton destroyed questionnaires used to select a jury in the sexual-assault trial of a longtime East Providence councilman.

Furthermore, lawyers for the newspaper argue in court papers that Darigan and the attorney general “wholly ignore” the explicit instructions on the front of the questionnaire to mark sensitive questions as “personal” and circle them. The newspaper is not seeking unfettered access, but asking that the judge balance the privacy interests of certain information that might be too personal against the public interest of other information contained in the questionnaires.

Lynch counters that it’s not practical to redact all of the personal information scattered throughout the questionnaires, even to innocuous questions regarding family, friends and neighbors.

The Journal counters that Darigan, by withholding the questionnaires, “`has unnecessarily closed the criminal justice system from public view, thereby frustrating the broad public interest in knowing that laws are being enforced and the courts and the criminal justice system are functioning.”

mstanton@projo.com