Cosby trial to stay in Norristown, judge rules; jury pool to be decided

Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial this spring will stay in Montgomery County, Pa., but with jurors from outside the county, a judge ruled Monday, citing pervasive local media coverage of the case.

In an order issued from the bench, Judge Steven T. O’Neill said he remained optimistic that moving jury selection would not delay the scheduled June 5 trial date. He also said he intended to sequester the panel — once it is selected and transported to Norristown — for the trial.

“No matter where we go, I have a feeling that [the media] will follow,” he said.

Deciding just where those jurors will come from now falls to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Typically, the justices look for counties similar in size to the original location of the prosecution, though there is no legal requirement to do so.

Cosby’s lawyers had pushed during a brief hearing Monday to draw the panel from a larger urban center of at least 1.2 million people like Philadelphia or Allegheny Counties. O’Neill, however, appeared skeptical that the state’s court administrators had an obligation to consider their input in making the decision.

Prosecutors did not oppose the idea of bringing in an outside jury, but pushed back against Cosby’s additional request to move the trial from Norristown altogether — a move defense attorney Brian J. McMonagle called “the best of the worst alternatives.”

He railed against the voracious media coverage of the case, accusing reporters and pundits of declaring themselves “judge, jury and executioner of Mr. Cosby’s reputation” and asserting it was impossible for his client to receive a fair trial anywhere in the country. However, McGonagle said, he held out hope that a county with an almost inexhaustible supply of potential jurors might help in selecting an impartial panel.

“No matter where we go ... the national media has affected the entire state of Pennsylvania,” he said. “Unless you’ve been living under a rock in this state or in this country day after day for the last few years, the message that has been promoted is that Bill Cosby is guilty and that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist.”

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele, who McMonagle had accused of contributing to the problem by running a series of campaign ads featuring the Cosby case while running for his post in 2015, declined to comment after the hearing.

But in arguments before the court one of his assistant prosecutors, Stewart Ryan, balked at what he described as the defense’s “excoriation of the media ... in an attempt to lay the faults of [Cosby] at their feet.”

Monday’s hearing follows a pretrial victory on Friday for Cosby: O’Neill’s ruling to bar prosecutors from calling all but one of the 13 female accusers they had hoped to put on the witness stand to bolster their portrait of the entertainer as a serial sexual predator.

Before that order, most of the case’s disputes had swung in favor of prosecutors, including O’Neill’s decision last year to allow them to present at trial Cosby’s own damaging, decade-old deposition testimony in which he acknowledged offering drugs to women he wanted to seduce.

Cosby is charged with aggravated indecent assault for allegedly drugging and molesting Constand at his Cheltenham home in 2004.

DAVID MAIALETTI / PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Lawyers for Bill Cosby, who is facing a sexual assault trial, pushed during a brief hearing Monday to have a jury panel drawn from a larger urban center such as Philadelphia or Allegheny County. A judge ruled that the trial will remain in Norristown, Pa.