Judge: 1 Additional Accuser Can Testify At Bill Cosby Trial

Style Magazine Newswire | 2/27/2017, 10:45 a.m.
A judge will let only one other accuser testify at Bill Cosby‘s sexual assault trial to bolster charges that the …
Bill Cosby is scheduled to go on trial on three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault on June 5, Judge Steven O'Neill said Tuesday at a preliminary hearing.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A judge will let only one other accuser testify at Bill Cosby‘s sexual assault trial to bolster charges that the actor drugged and molested a woman at his estate near Philadelphia.

The pivotal ruling Friday by a Pennsylvania judge means prosecutors cannot call 12 other women to try to show that the 79-year-old comedian has a history of similar “bad acts.”

Cosby is set to go on trial in June over the 2005 complaint by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand, who is now a massage therapist in Toronto.

Prosecutors reopened the case in 2015 after newly released court documents showed Cosby admitting he gave drugs and alcohol to young women before sex over a 50-year period.

Prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia had asked the judge to let 13 other women testify, a list they developed after reviewing claims by nearly 50 of the accusers who have come forward in recent years. The defense objected to their testimony, saying the string of old “casting couch” claims are not unique to Cosby and therefore not part of “signature” behavior

Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill said he carefully weighed the witnesses’ value in providing relevant testimony versus the potential prejudice to Cosby.

The one witness who can testify says she was assaulted by Cosby in 1996 in Los Angeles.

The ruling is one of two key pretrial issues in the case. O’Neill had earlier ruled that jurors could hear Cosby’s damaging testimony from Constand’s 2005 sexual battery lawsuit. The deposition runs to nearly 1,000 pages and covers a string of Cosby’s extramarital affairs and liaisons dating back to the 1960s.

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