Bill Cosby was back in court today for a hearing in a sex-assault case against him.
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According to court documents Cosby described the sexual encounter.
He had been a university trustee and she had managed the university’s women’s basketball team at the time. Angela Agrusa of Liner LLP also will handle the defamation lawsuits filed in several states by women who say they were defamed when Cosby or his agents denied their accounts.
Bill Cosby is led into Courtroom A in the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennslyvania by one of his aides.
Cosby’s lawyers want that deposition thrown out of court. Angela Agrusa of Liner LLP took over on July 11. He had been in the limelight since the early 1960s, when the Philadelphian was tapped to star in “I Spy”, becoming the rare black actor to star in a network TV show at the time.
His accuser in this first trial is Andrea Constand, one of the more than 50 women who have come forward to accuse the comic of sexual assault, claiming that he attacked her in 2004, EFE news reported.
Cosby became known as “America’s Dad” for his top-rated show on family life that ran from 1984 to 1992.
Prosecutors asked a judge Tuesday to allow the women to testify as witnesses to a pattern of criminal behavior they say began in 1964.
The motion includes the accounts of those women who met the comedian through the entertainment industry or other social settings.
A judge will rule on this later.
Prosecutors say they hope to have 13 Cosby accusers testify at the trial. She later woke up naked in a hotel room and said she had been sexually assaulted.
There’s also the phone call between the alleged victim’s mother, Gianna Constand, and Cosby more that a decade ago, which Gianna surreptitiously recorded. Legal experts have said a judge might allow as evidence similar allegations against Cosby in which drugs or alcohol were involved. Many of those women came forward after Pennsylvania authorities reopened the Constand case previous year. The case originally was looking to go to trial next spring, but scheduling issues for the lawyers – especially Cosby’s main attorney Brian McMonagle – seemingly have forced the delay.
“It’s all pieces that we have in this case”, Steele said.
McMonagle said he plans to file for a change in venue for both the location of the trial and the jurors, asserting the current population is too saturated with information about the case.
Another woman said Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the late 1960s after befriending her and acting as a mentor to her 9-year-old son.
Also Tuesday, Cosby’s lawyers asked a judge to block prosecutors from using a 2005 telephone conversation at trial because Constand’s mother recorded it without his permission.
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The 79-year-old comedian is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault in the case.
