SAN FRANCISCO -- Seven years after it was filed, a lawsuit over the use of pepper spray on the eyes of anti-logging protesters is scheduled for a new trial before a new judge in federal court in San Francisco this week.

Jury selection in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is set to start Wednesday. Opening statements are slated for Thursday.

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Eight protesters claim Humboldt County sheriff's deputies used unconstitutional excessive force and caused extreme pain when they allegedly smeared pepper spray on the activists' eyes during protests of Pacific Lumber Co.'s logging of ancient redwoods in 1997.

The case drew national attention when videotapes of the alleged smearing of liquid spray were aired on national television in 1997.

The first trial in the court of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in 1998 ended in a mistrial when the jury could not agree on a verdict.

Over the next six years, various aspects of the case were appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and the U.S. Supreme Court three times.

Illston was assigned to the case after the plaintiffs successfully appealed to the circuit court for a different judge on the ground that Walker did not appear to be impartial.

The plaintiffs' lead attorney in the retrial will be San Francisco lawyer Tony Serra, who alleged when he stepped into the case last year that applying the liquid spray amounted to torture.

Serra said then, "This case will be vigorously prosecuted and it will be a political trial and I'm proud of it."

The defendants in the case are Humboldt County; retired Sheriff Dennis Lewis; former Chief Deputy Sheriff Gary Philp, who is now the sheriff; and the city of Eureka.

They claim the use of pepper spray was the safest way to end the protests, in which demonstrators had locked their arms together in metal cylinders.

Their lawyer, Nancy Delaney, told Illston during a pretrial hearing last month, "This is a policy that was adopted to avoid people being seriously injured."

The three protests were carried out at Pacific Lumber Co.'s headquarters in Scotia, in a redwood forest and in the Eureka office of former Congressman Frank Riggs in September and October 1997.