Cosby judge rules on jury selection, not if they'll hear about Spanish Fly

The judge overseeing Bill Cosby's sex-assault trial intends to screen up to 125 potential jurors a day as selection begins next month in Pittsburgh for what will likely be one of the most closely watched celebrity trials the state has ever seen.

Once the panel members are chosen, Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill said Monday, they will be sequestered and bused nearly 300 miles to Norristown for what is expected to be a two-week trial starting June 5. The jurors' names will not be made public, he said.

Those announcements came at the start of a daylong hearing in which the contours of the long-awaited trial began to emerge – from how the 12 jurors and six alternates will be chosen to what evidence they will be allowed to consider.

But many important questions remain unresolved.

O'Neill issued no rulings Monday, as lawyers for both sides sparred over whether Cosby's  statements about his use of the '70s party drug quaaludes and an aphrodisiac known as "Spanish Fly" should be admitted at trial.

The judge also declined to set a starting date for jury selection, saying only that he intended to begin in late May, depending on when Allegheny County can accommodate the process.

And no mention was made of how much the out-of-town jury screening, sequestration, and added security will cost.

Still, the judge took pains Monday to make clear that he would like to treat the trial much like any other, despite the intense media scrutiny it will inevitably draw.

"This is an important case to everyone involved," he said. "But it isn't a different case to what courts try all the time."

O'Neill has acknowledged that some concessions are necessary, a point only emphasized by the handful of supporters waiting outside the Norristown courthouse as Cosby left for the day.

"We love you, Bill! You're innocent," one shouted from behind police barricades. Cosby, dressed in a dark suit and striped tie with matching pocket square, shouted back: "All right!"

Earlier this year, O'Neill agreed to choose jurors from Allegheny County after Cosby's lawyers said pretrial publicity made it unlikely they could find a fair jury in Montgomery County.

But he denied defense requests Monday for a more extensive vetting that would pull from a pool of nearly 2,000 potential jurors.

Cosby's lawyers had asked for a weeks-long process, beginning with mailing detailed questionnaires to thousands and seeking prospective jurors' opinions on celebrity and sexual abuse in an effort to narrow the pool.

Defense lawyer Angela Agrusa argued that such measures were necessary because the Cosby case has had "more publicity than any piece of litigation … we have probably ever seen in our lifetimes."

"You cannot walk into a grocery store, convenience store, or a mini-mart without seeing headlines – not just in the tabloids but in the mainstream news and print – calling him a predator and a rapist," she said.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele pushed back against those unusual steps, saying they would only draw more attention to the case.

Later, prosecutors renewed their request to use Cosby's past statements of using party drugs and aphrodisiacs in encounters with women against him, saying his statements in a 2005 deposition and in comedic routines over his half-century career offered a rare glimpse inside the entertainer's mind.

"You don't often get to look behind the curtain, but that's exactly what you have in this case," said Assistant District Attorney M. Stewart Ryan.

The deposition testimony stems from a lawsuit brought by Andrea Constand, who says Cosby drugged and assaulted her at his Cheltenham residence in 2004. In the deposition, Cosby admitted he had obtained prescriptions for quaaludes in the '70s to use in consensual sexual encounters with women.

Prosecutors have also flagged one of Cosby's often-repeated jokes about "Spanish Fly" as evidence of an alleged fixation on using chemicals to seduce women. In a chapter of his 1991 book, Childhood, Cosby joked of secretly sprinkling the substance on cookies to give to girls at a party when they were 13.

Considering the question Monday, O'Neill seemed to draw a distinction between Cosby's weighty sworn testimony, given after he had been accused of a crime, and the humor in an exaggerated comedic bit he developed long before his current legal woes.

"Clearly one is in the context of comedy," he said. "The defendant in this case is a comedian."

Cosby lawyer Brian J. McMonagle argued it was unfair to admit either piece of evidence at trial. Likening Cosby's use of a '70s party drug in a consensual sexual encounter to Constand's allegations that she was drugged and assaulted is like comparing "lightning bugs to lightning," he said.

As for the relevance of Cosby's "Spanish Fly" bit?

"I hesitate to dignify that with any argument," he said, and immediately sat down.