Get out your checkbooks, taxpayers.
Defense lawyers for convicted cop killer Ronell Wilson today said they may ask a judge to move the retrial of his re-sentencing trial — where he faces a possible death penalty — out of Brooklyn federal court because of publicity that includes his impregnating jail guard Nancy Gonzalez last year.
Judge Nicholas Garaufis tells Wilson’s lawyers that if they want to hire someone to poll the potential juror population for bias — the basis for such a motion to move the trial — “It should be [done] now.”
That poll, like Wilson’s court-appointed lawyers, would be paid for with taxpayer funds. The cost of the case since his 2003 arrest for killing NYPD detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews already has topped an estimated $5 million.
Garaufis told the lawyers not to worry about the cost of the poll — which consultants told The Post could approach $65,000.
“In a [capital] case like this, there are no budgetary limits on expenditure,” Garaufis said.
The eight-months-pregnant Gonzalez, who is charged with having sex with Wilson in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, yesterday refused to answer when The Post asked her Valentine’s Day plans as she left her Long Island home.