Lawyers for Cosby asked a judge to throw out charges leveled by the Montgomery County District Attorney, saying Cosby drugged and assaulted Andrea Constand at his philadelphia-area home in 2004.
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Then-District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, who is now a county judge, last summer reviewed the case against Cosby and made a decision to try him on the Constand allegations. Cosby’s defense attorneys argued that either a new preliminary hearing should be held with Constand testifying, or the charges should be dropped.
Cosby expressed disappointment in a statement issued by his spokesman nearly immediately.
“Someone who has given so much to so many had his constitutional rights trampled upon once again”, he said. In a Pennsylvania courtroom on Thursday, Cosby’s legal team attempted to get his case dismissed or force his accuser to testify in a pretrial hearing. When he arrived at the defense table, he broke into a big smile as he greeted his lead attorney, Brian McMonagle.
Cosby’s lawyers had wanted badly to question accuser Andrea Constand, a former Temple University women’s basketball official. You know what a witness can do? “A witness can recant”.
Prosecutors countered that since witness credibility is not an issue in a preliminary hearing, there’s no reason to put an accuser on the stand.
“It’s our position we’re not going to re-traumatize victims”, Falin said. Kevin Steele said. “If they want to confront the witness, they can confront her at trial”.
Cosby sat at the defense table taking in the arguments with his finger to his lips much of the time.
After a three-hour hearing in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, Judge O’Neill refused to schedule a new preliminary hearing in the case.
He told the judge he was using a 2013 rule change to spare Ms Constand and other sex crime victims from multiple cross-examinations. Constand sued Cosby in civil court and it was settled and sealed in 2006, but is now reopened after other women accused him of similar behavior.
So far, the case brought over Constand’s allegations is the only criminal case against him.
Cosby entered the courtroom in a tan jacket and brown trousers, leaning on the arm of a public relations agent and flanked by a burly bodyguard. They contend that a trial was contingent on their ability to interrogate Constand in court, but their habeas corpus petition was denied. Cosby has admitted giving her the allergy medication Benadryl but has maintained they engaged in consensual acts. She consumed both voluntarily. They testified as to the facts in her 11-year-old statement.
“We were acting within the law”, said county Chief of Appeals Robert Falin, responding to Tayback.
Steele argued that a victim doesn’t have to be unconscious the whole time for the charges to stick.
Cosby was present at Thursday’s hearing, often whispering with his lawyers and nodding his head as the proceedings went on.
“She is not in a state that she is able to consent to any of this”, Steele said. That’s also what Constand said in her statement to police.
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A warrant for comedian and alleged rapist Bill Cosby’s arrest for a felony sexual assault charge was first issued toward the end of December 2015.
