The jury selection process for the upcoming trial of alleged "cannibal cop" Gilberto Valle is going to be a gas. Because of all the media attention, Valle's lawyer, Julia Gatto, is concerned about a biased jury pool, and, among other things, she intends to show potential jurors a series of pornographic cannibalism images to gauge how biased they may be toward people who get turned on by sexxxy edible ladies. [Possibly NSFWish photo below.]

After court reporters for the NY Post learned of the images Gatto wants to use, they asked judge Paul G. Gardephe to release them, which Gatto strongly objected to. The Times reports that Gatto complained about all the media attention generated by her allegedly human-hungry client, and blasted the Post calling Valle “the Cannibal Cop.” (To be sure, the Post isn't alone on that.) If made public, the images might be used, Gatto argued, “to perpetuate this smear campaign against our client, making the already difficult task of selecting a fair jury nearly impossible.”

In other words, there may be potential jurors out there who were either uninformed or even unfazed by allegations that Valle wanted to kidnap women and cook them over low heat to "keep [them] alive as long as possible." But once the public becomes aware of shocking images like the one below, Gatto worries they'll never be able to see Valle for the harmless horndog he really is:

The defense insists that potential jurors need to be “especially vetted,” because “at trial Mr. Valle will acknowledge that he has unusual, sexual fantasies which involve imagined acts of violence against women — a fetish that will be difficult for most jurors to comprehend.” Judge Gardephe gets that, but he wasn't buying Gatto's motion to keep the images unreleased. According to the Times, he noted that the images were not directly linked to Officer Valle, and did “not add significantly to the information already in the public record concerning the Web sites in question.”

Besides the naked woman hog-tied with an apple in her mouth, the Post reports [SPOILER ALERT] that potential jurors will also be shown a cartoon of a nude woman "partly submerged inside a clear, bubbling pot of vegetables atop a stove being tended by a mustachioed cook wearing an apron and hunting cap." A cartoon dialogue bubble above the chef says, "Well Karyn you seem to be cooking up quite nicely... Your guests are going to get a very special dinner tonight." Another photo shows a naked woman bound, gagged and tied to a spit over an open fire.

Valle's attorney insists her client never intended to act on these fantasies, and that he's no different from any other harmless deviant who frequents message boards and websites like "Devoured." Prosecutors counter that Officer Valle took "concrete steps" toward acting out his fantasies, including conducting surveillance on one potential victim. But a prominent psychiatrist who evaluated Valle found that the cop "lacked certain risk factors for violence."

As if to reinforce the "harmless perv" defense, Valle's lawyer says her client contributed short stories to one Web site “and was encouraged by readers to continue writing.” With any luck, the Post will get its hands on the steamy unpublished works of "Cannibal Cop" any day now.