As his lawyers have failed to get hiscase thrown out of court, Bill Cosby has now made his first appearance. His lawyers are now focusing on blocking some of the dozens of accusations against the 80-year-old actor and preventing the accusers from testifying at the retrial.
The prosecution team is trying to get the judge to agree to up to 19 more women testifying against Cosby. One of these women is model Janet Dickinson. The aim of the prosecutors is to demonstrate that the veteran actor has a substantial history of attacking and drugging women. A further aim is to prevent Andrea Constand, who has made an allegation against Cosby, from experiencing attacks on her credibility.
According to Adrienne D. Jappe, an Assistant District Attorney, if the judge allows further women to take to the stand, the jurors will see that the actor shows a pattern of intoxicating his female victims to incapacitate them and allowing him to sexually assault them. This is an issue that Cosby’s lawyers will now have to address when they next appear in court. They have said that some of the allegations are impossible to defend as they date back as far as the 1960s. Due to the historic nature of these allegations, some evidence has been lost, people’s memories have faded, and some of the witnesses are now deceased.
So far, Judge Steven O’Neill has not made a decision with regards to whether to allow further women to testify or not. He has described it as an ‘extraordinarily weighty issue’ and he feels that he needs further time to review the situation. In his opinion, the two-day hearing will not allow enough time for him to make such an important decision.
During the first trial last year, the judge only allowed one additional accuser to take the stand. He barred any mention of the 60 more accusations that have come to light over the last few years. As these were banned, jurors only knew of Cosby’s past because of the deposition excerpts that were used as evidence in court. These dated to 2005 and 2006 and included the actor admitting that when he wanted to have sex with a woman, he would give them quaaludes.
When Bill Cosby entered the courtroom last year, he did so on the arm of a spokesperson. He took to the stand and admitted having physical relations with Constand but has said that this encounter was consensual. The reason for the retrial now is that the jury deadlocked following the initial trial.
Cosby’s legal team is now arguing that much of the evidence shows that it is impossible for the alleged assault to have taken place. This evidence includes both itineraries and telephone records. Lawyer Tom Mesereau, who was once Michael Jackson’s lawyer, has said that this evidence means that the allegations cannot be substantiated and the lack of evidence means that the allegation falls outside the statute of limitations.
Constand’s testimony has already been disputed by Cosby’s defense team. She claims that she was assaulted by Cosby at his home in Philadelphia in January 2004. At that time, she was a women’s basketball executive at Temple University and Cosby was a trustee for Temple. Constand was unable to provide a specific date that the assault allegedly took place. In this particular case, the date of the assault is especially important as the arrest of the actor did not take place until December 30, 2015. This means that if the assault took place before December 30, 2003, then it is outside the 12-year statute of limitations. Constand has simply said that the attack was before January 20, 2004.
Jury selection will begin later in March 2018, and O’Neill has said that he has rejected a motion to dismiss the charges and will leave it for the jury to decide. The lawyer was asked to throw Cosby’s team off the court case by District Attorney Kevin Steele. This was because the team did not reveal that an interview took place with a woman who had provided information that would cast doubt over the accusations. According to the DA, Cosby’s legal team have acted in an incompetent reckless, and unethical manner.
This is a particularly difficult time for Bill Cosby as his daughter died from kidney disease just days before the hearing. At the beginning of the hearing, the judge offered his condolences.
Follow Us
