trial

Bill Cosby’s Lawyers Want a New Trial Location

Bill Cosby Preliminary Hearing
Photo: Pool/Getty Images

On Friday, lawyers for Bill Cosby filed a 12-page motion with a Pennsylvania judge asking that the pending criminal trial against Cosby be moved to another county. According to the New York Times, the lawyers claim that the intense local-media coverage surrounding Cosby’s sexual-assault charges has tainted the jury pool in Montgomery County. While you may be thinking that the cat is out of the bag and everyone with a computer, television, or human contact already knows the allegations — that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted a former Temple employee in 2004 — you’re right, but the lawyers claim it is particularly so in Montgomery. Last year, Kevin Steele, the district attorney of the county, ran television advertisements against his political rival Bruce Castor for never prosecuting Cosby when the allegations first appeared a decade earlier. The motion claimed that prospective jurors living in this area would have seen the advertisements and “been uniquely subjected to extensive, sustained, and pervasive negative coverage of the case against Mr. Cosby.” The judge has yet to announce whether there will be a change of venue for the trial, which is set to start in June.