Comedian and entertainer Bill Cosby is back in a Pennsylvania courtroom after being charged for sexual assault.
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Also Tuesday a civil case against the legendary comedian in a California court was dropped by a woman who had claimed Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008.
That testimony, released only last year, prompted the successors of former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr.to reopen the case and ultimately charge the 78-year-old Cosby with felony sexual assault. According to an affidavit, Constand said she was at the sitcom star’s house in 2004 when he offered her three blue pills and some wine. For his part, Kevin Steel, the new Montgomery County prosecutor who replaced Castor after unseating him last fall, says he won’t throw out the case-even if evidence of a deal emerges. Castor, and now, Cosby’s team, have said that Steele used Cosby as a political prop during the 2015 campaign. “I want them to win”.
Castor defended his decision not to bring charges, testifying that he saw Constand’s year-long delay in reporting the allegations, inconsistencies in her statements and her contact with a lawyer before going to police as problematic.
A federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by a Pittsburgh-area woman who claims Bill Cosby defamed her when he and his representatives responded to allegations.
The proceedings will continue Wednesday.
“I never made a deal that involved criminal cases that was not in writing”, Lynne Abraham, a longtime judge and district attorney in Philadelphia, said Monday.
Did the former district attorney make a statement in a press release that now bars prosecution?
The district attorney who declined a decade ago to bring sex-crime charges against Bill Cosby testified Tuesday that his decision was meant to forever close the door on prosecuting the comedian.
“Making Mr. Cosby pay money to Ms. Constand was the best I would be able to set the stage for because a prosecution was not viable and never would be”, Castor said during a hearing in a suburban Philadelphia court.
Cosby’s defense team, led by attorneys Monique Pressley, of Washington, D.C., and Brian J. McMonagle, of Philadelphia, says the prosecution isn’t fair, and has moved for dismissal of the charges.
“Can the defense convince a “by the book” judge like Judge O’Neill to dismiss the charges based upon this argument when there is not really a page in the “rulebook” that they can readily point to?” he said.
An entertainment icon, who built a career on family-friendly comedy, Cosby now faces accusations from dozens of women that he sexually assaulted them after sedating them with drugs and alcohol, in a series of alleged attacks dating back as far as the 1960s. “This is, to me, is an extremely unusual arrangement because the prosecutor, Bruce, has made a deal not involving a criminal case, but a civil matter”.
Castor said he believed Constand’s charges but thought a jury would view her as less than credible because she had waited a year to bring charges and had hired a lawyer to look into a civil suit against Cosby. She filed the suit last October.
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The hearing that started Tuesday to determine if the criminal case against Bill Cosby is allowed to go forward is unprecedented on several levels, according to defense lawyers contacted by PhillyVoice. “I came to the conclusion that there was no way that the case could ever improve and get better with time absent Mr. Cosby’s confession”, Castor told the court Tuesday.
