Cosby’s trial cost Montgomery County more than $219,000, accounting says
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — Bill Cosby’s sexual-assault trial cost Montgomery County more than $219,000, according to a partial accounting released Thursday of the most closely watched legal spectacle the suburban county has ever hosted.
County officials said they had not yet calculated how the expenses for the trial, which ended last month after jurors were unable to reach a verdict, would affect its annual budget.
But the price tag on prosecuting the now-80-year-old entertainer — including $129,000 for overtime costs and $74,000 to accommodate the sequestered jury — is likely only to grow as Mr. Cosby returns to Norristown for a retrial this fall.
In a statement that appeared to anticipate criticism of that bill, Montgomery County District Attorn e y Kevin Steele responded within minutes to the calculations released by county administrators.
“We have said all along that you can’t put a price on justice,” he said. “We are always budget-conscious, but we are also cognizant that our decisions must be based upon the facts and the evidence. We also must follow the trail wherever it leads us and we must overcome hurdles to obtaining justice.”
Still, the total $219,000 tab — which worked out to just shy of 75 cents for each of the county’s 309,000 households — is likely a pittance compared to the sum Mr. Cosby is said to have paid his lawyers and publicity team to defend against the only criminal charges to emerge from the allegations of dozens of women who have said they were drugged and assaulted by the celebrity once known as “America’s Dad.”
The case drew hundreds of reporters, demonstrators, and gawkers from across the country to Norristown and required a coterie of county law enforcement personnel to keep the peace when the trial reached its inconclusive end after five days and 52 hours of jury deliberations.
Nearly half of the county’s bill for the trial went toward paying sheriff’s deputies $98,000 in overtime for security work during the two-week trial and jury-selection process in Allegheny County, a locale selected by state court administrators after Mr. Cosby’s lawyers argued that Montgomery County had been too tainted by publicity surrounding the case to yield a panel of impartial jurors.