Bill Cosby failed to get his sex assault case thrown out Monday, setting the stage for his April retrial in the wake of a national reckoning over sex abuse.
Cosby, 80, appeared in a suburban Philadelphia courtroom for the first time since the downfall of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein helped crystallize the #MeToo movement, and heard Judge Steven O’Neill shoot down his motion for dismissal.
His new defense team, led by Michael Jackson’s former lawyer Tom Mesereau, had argued travel and phone records prove his alleged assault of Andrea Constand could not have occurred between Dec. 30, 2003, and Jan. 20, 2004, as she has claimed.
The dates are critical because Cosby was arrested Dec. 30, 2015, and there’s a 12-year statute of limitations. Constand has said Cosby drugged and molested her at his Cheltenham mansion before her cousin moved in with her on Jan. 20, 2004.
The judge said Monday the date of the alleged assault was for jurors to decide.
He did not immediately rule on prosecutors’ request that 19 other Cosby accusers be allowed to take the witness stand.
Prosecutors previously asked for 13 such witnesses at Cosby’s first trial last year. They were allowed only one, Kelley Johnson.
The accusers are needed to show Cosby “systematically engaged in a signature pattern of providing an intoxicant to his young female victim and then sexually assaulting her when she became incapacitated,” Assistant District Attorney Adrienne Jappe said.
O’Neill said he would need some time to rule on the request, calling it an “extraordinarily weighty issue.”
Cosby’s lawyers have said they’ll seek a trial postponement if the court allows more accusers this time around.
“While the prospect of trotting out 19 other accusers makes for a splashy headline, it does nothing to advance the goal of fairly deciding Bill Cosby’s guilt or innocence,” the defense team argued in paperwork last month.
“The law is clear that jurors must not base their verdict on a defendant’s supposed bad ‘character,’ but rather only on evidence that the defendant actually committed the charged offense.”
Cosby’s pre-trial hearing is due back before the judge Tuesday.
When a jury deadlocked at Cosby’s first sex-assault trial last June, Weinstein was still a mighty Hollywood mogul. The cascade of allegations against him and other Hollywood gatekeepers over the past six months has ushered in a new understanding of sexual harassment and gender power dynamics.
