Prosecutors in Bill Cosby’s sex assault case in Pennsylvania objected Monday to defense efforts to prescreen as many as 2,000 potential jurors.
They also said in a court filing that the jury should be selected weeks before the scheduled June 5 trial so jurors can prepare to be sequestered nearly 300 miles away from home. And they challenged defense claims that it will be tough to find people without opinions of the longtime Hollywood icon.
In a sometimes caustic court filing, they 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,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said, noting that it took just a day to pick jurors for the state attorney general’s perjury trial last year.
Cosby, who turns 80 next month, is accused of drugging and molesting a Temple University basketball team manager at his home in 2004, an encounter he calls consensual. He was 66 at the time; Andrea Constand was 30.