Bill Cosby: 11 jurors have been selected for upcoming criminal trial
The comedian's trial is set to begin June 5.
— -- Eleven jurors have been selected from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania to hear testimony at Bill Cosby's criminal trial next month.
At the end of the day on Tuesday, three white women, one black woman, and seven white men had been chosen to sit on the 12-person jury.
Attorneys must also select six alternate jurors, according to the Associated Press.
Cosby, who faces 10 years in prison if he's convicted of sexual assault, has been present for both days of proceedings at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh.
Cosby, 79, was charged in 2015 with felony aggravated indecent assault stemming from an alleged 2004 encounter with accuser Andrea Constand. He has pleaded not guilty.
In 2005, Constand went to the police to report that Cosby drugged and sexually molested her at his home the year before, but the district attorney at the time declined to bring charges against the comedian. Constand then filed a civil suit against Cosby, and in a deposition that was, in part, later unsealed by the court, he claimed he gave Constand Benadryl and said that their sexual encounter was consensual.
“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything," he said. "And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped."
That suit was settled; the terms, confidential and sealed.
Though the trial will take place in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, beginning on June 5, a judge granted a request from Cosby's legal team to bring in a jury from outside the area. The hope, Cosby's attorney argued, was to allow for a more racially and socioeconomically diverse group.
Cosby, who is not expected to testify in the trial, has said that he believes race may have played a role in the accusations of drugging and/or sexual misconduct made against him by many women.
"Could be. Could be," he told Sirius XM radio host Michael Smerconish earlier this month. "I can't say anything, but there are certain things that I look at, and I apply to the situation, and there are so many tentacles. So many different -- 'nefarious' is a great word. I just truly believe that some of it may very well be that."