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Cosby lawyers: #MeToo moment makes a fair trial difficult

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The #MeToo movement is making it tougher for Bill Cosby to get a fair trial, his lawyers asserted Tuesday, as they fought in a pretrial hearing here to prevent 19 additional accusers from testifying at his retrial on sexual assault charges.

Cosby has said that the episode, which occurred at his home near here, was consensual.

“This is a 40-year, continuous pattern,” said Adrienne Jappe, an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, where the retrial will take place.

But defense lawyers said allowing more accusers onto the stand would distract the jurors from the case at the heart of the trial. Becky S. James, one of Cosby’s lawyers, said in the pretrial hearing, “Letting in multiple mini-trials, which this would be, would end up dominating.”

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“One is too many,” she said, “and 19 is far, far too many.” She noted that Cosby would be at a disadvantage battling accounts that depict events said to have occurred decades ago. “These are just ancient accusations,” she said.

But prosecutors said that each accuser’s credibility was an issue for the jury to consider and that limiting the testimony would reduce their ability to show a predatory pattern.

The defense team said the #MeToo movement had nothing to do with Cosby. Some experts, however, say #MeToo may change how people view the accusers’ credibility, and the Cosby case may be the first significant test of how a jury might be affected at trial.

Since Cosby’s first trial ended in a hung jury in June, many powerful men have faced public accusations of sexual assault. Three years earlier, Cosby experienced his own rush of accusations that he had hidden a history of mistreating women behind his comforting role as “America’s Dad.”

More than 50 women have accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them. During the last trial, prosecutors sought permission for 13 more women to testify in addition to Constand, but Judge Steven T. O’Neill allowed only one more to tell her story. He did not explain his reasoning then or indicate Tuesday when he might rule on the question for the retrial.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

GRAHAM BOWLEY © 2018 The New York Times

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