Prosecutors want 13 other women who have accused Cosby of molesting them to testify at the trial.
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Montgomery County prosecutor Kevin Steele told the court that he wants up to 13 other alleged victims to testify at trial.
The defense is expected to vehemently oppose such testimony.
Cosby has replaced one top-tier Los Angeles law firm with another on his defense team, the second such switch in about a year. Inside the courtroom, longtime litigator Brian McMonagle will lead the defense.
In December, Cosby received three felony charges of aggravated indecent assault linked to the incident involving Constand, then the director of operations for the Temple University women’s basketball team, where Cosby served on the board of trustees.
In that deposition, Cosby described his sexual encounter with Constand in graphic detail, although he portrayed it as consensual. Cosby’s lawyers contend the phone call was illegally taped under Pennsylvania law, but the judge denied the motion because Constand’s mother, who was calling from Canada, “was perfectly permitted to record phone call in Canada”. She did not report their encounter until a year later, when the then-district attorney, Bruce Castor, decided there was not enough evidence to pursue Cosby.
Cosby’s lawyers hope to suppress the deposition Cosby gave in the accuser’s 2005 lawsuit.
Most of the other claims can not be prosecuted because they have expired under statutes of limitation and Cosby’s lawyers maintain the actor is innocent. However, the prosecution in the sexual assault case has argued that it is legal because in the jurisdiction where it was recorded, only one-party consent is required. Constand’s mother told him it was a parrot in the background.
“I know this is a beep, ‘ Cosby said”. But Castor said he made the promise so that Cosby couldn’t use the Fifth Amendment to avoid the questions.
The defense claims that Cosby did not know he was being recorded.
Two months ago the judge in the case rejected Cosby’s request to have the criminal charges dismissed. McMonagle said his team is still researching what locations may not have been inundated with the story that has garnered national headlines.
The motion to call the other women was not argued on Tuesday at the hearing in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and O’Neill didn’t say when he would rule on it.
“This case now 252 days from filing of criminal complaints”, O’Neill said.
“I told him, ‘I can’t talk, Mr Cosby.’ I started to panic”, she said in a criminal complaint in December previous year.
But he lost that argument. The call was played for Judge Steven O’Neil.
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He is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting about 60 women over the past 50 years, but numerous women revealed what happened well after the fact, and prosecutors were unable to purse charges.
