Prosecutors fight Cosby bid to grill up to 2,000 potential jurors for trial
PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors in Bill Cosby's sex assault case in Pennsylvania objected Monday to defense efforts to question as many as 2,000 potential jurors.
Cosby is to be tried on three counts of aggravated indecent sexual assault in June in Montgomery County in suburban Philadelphia, but the jury will be selected from Allegheny County, or Pittsburgh, because of pre-trial publicity over the past two years.
Cosby's lawyers have filed motions seeking the drafting of a questionnaire to be mailed to up to 1,500 to 2,000 potential jurors in the western Pennsylvania county 300 miles away. The potential jurors would fill out the questionnaire and submit it prior to appearing for the usual voir dire, or in-person questioning by both sides, beginning on June 5, the date his trial is to begin.
But District Attorney Kevin Steele objected to Cosby's plan in court filings Monday, arguing that the jury should be selected weeks earlier so jurors can prepare to be sequestered away from home. He argues that Cosby deserves no "special treatment," and opening statements at the trial should start that day.
Prosecutors also challenged defense claims that it will be difficult to find people without opinions of the longtime Hollywood icon. In a sometimes caustic court filing, the prosecutors called that "a cynical view" of the potential jurors in Allegheny County.
"Defendant forecasts that jury selection will take weeks; we are confident that it will not," Steele said.
Cosby, who turns 80 next month, is charged with drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee, at his nearby home in 2004. He says the encounter was consensual. She says it was not.
Prosecutors had hoped to call a dozen women out of about five dozen who have made similar accusations, but the judge will allow just one "prior bad act" witness: a woman who worked for Cosby's agent and said he drugged and assaulted her during a lunch meeting at the Bel-Air Hotel, in Los Angeles, in 1996.
The Cosby criminal case, the only one brought against him after two years of accusations, has been widely covered in the national and international media, including his appearances at a half-dozen court hearings at the courthouse in Montgomery County.
Steele sought to downplay the impact of such coverage, saying a fair and impartial jury can be selected by relying on the standard "efficient" jury selection process in Pennsylvania.
The battle over jury selection is just the latest legal maneuvering in the high-profile case. The judge must still decide how much the jury will hear from a deposition by Cosby in connection with a civil suit Constand filed against him, in which he discussed his long history of extramarital affairs and his habit of giving drugs to women he sought for sex.
The next court hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday.
