Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Cosby wants jury pool prescreened for bias before trial

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bill Cosby's lawyers hope to prescreen potential jurors to weed out those with opinions about the sex-assault case before jury selection begins in person.

A defense motion filed Monday says the "inflammatory" worldwide coverage of the case has probably left some potential jurors with opinions about the actor's guilt or innocence.

They say pretrial questionnaires have been used before in celebrity trials.

The 79-year-old Cosby is charged with drugging and molesting a young woman at his house in 2004. Cosby calls the sex acts consensual.

He is set to go on trial June 5 near Philadelphia. The jurors will be chosen from the Pittsburgh area because of pretrial publicity and sequestered about 300 miles near the Montgomery County courthouse.

Cosby's lawyers want to send pretrial questionnaires to 1,500 to 2,000 potential jurors.

More

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Reasonable defense action.

Anonymous said...

Very reasonable. Especially when those "women" are after his money.
They had years to do this and wait this long????