Bill cosby's retrial proceeds as judge rejects motions to dismiss

They asked that charges against him be dismissed before his retrial in April.

The dating of the encounter, which Cosby, 80, says was consensual, is important because the sexual assault charges have a 12-year statute of limitations here in Pennsylvania. If the encounter occurred more than 12 years before Dec. 30, 2015, when Cosby was charged with drugging and sexually assaulting Constand, the charges would have to be dismissed.

“We have got the entire month of January covered here,” said Becky S. James, one of Cosby’s lawyers. “There are undisputed records here that this could not have occurred in January 2004.”

For example, the Cosby legal team said that, while Constand has said she called Cosby from her car on the night in question to have him open the gates to his home, her cellphone records from that period do not reflect any calls to him.

Cosby’s lawyers said they are going to argue the encounter happened before the end of December 2003. Constand has said she thought it occurred in January 2004, prosecutors have long said it was in either January or February of that year.

“We see a lot of problems and a lot of holes in their evidence,” said Robert Fallin, deputy district attorney for Montgomery County.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas ultimately rejected the motion to dismiss and said the issue should be addressed at trial.

“This is a matter that will be determined by the jury ultimately,” said the judge, who also presided last year when Cosby’s first trial ended with a hung jury.

The ruling came on the first of two days of pretrial hearings in the case in which Constand — who worked for the women’s basketball program at Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater — has accused Cosby of assaulting her at his suburban home near here.

Cosby’s lawyers also asked the judge to dismiss the case because, they said, prosecutors had failed to properly investigate claims made by another potential witness, Marguerite Jackson, a student adviser at Temple.

Jackson said that years ago Constand had told her that she had been drugged and assaulted by a famous person, then later said it had not happened, but that making the allegation could result in a valuable lawsuit settlement.

Constand testified last year at trial that she did not know Jackson, and O’Neill then blocked Jackson from testifying, asserting her evidence was hearsay.

But Cosby’s lawyers suggested Monday that they had evidence the two women did know each other and argued that investigators should have delved more deeply into their relationship.

“They would have seen that this woman has obvious credibility,” Kathleen Bliss, one of Cosby’s lawyers, said of Jackson.

The Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, scoffed at the assertion that his investigators had acted improperly and O’Neil again rejected the effort to dismiss the case. He did, though, leave open the possibility that he might allow Jackson to testify at the retrial. Cosby’s legal team has made clear it wants her to be a key witness.

Among the issues to be discussed Tuesday is whether the jury at the retrial will be allowed to hear about a civil suit brought by Constand in 2005 that ended with Cosby paying a financial settlement.

It was kept out of the first trial, but Cosby’s team now seems willing to admit its discussion.

The defense will also object to efforts by prosecutors to include witness testimony from 19 other women who say they were drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby. Prosecutors say the additional women helped to bolster Constand’s credibility and establish that Cosby was a predator with a signature method of assaulting women.

“It is needed to counter the defense’s inevitable attacks on Ms. Constand’s credibility,” said Adrienne Jappe, an assistant district attorney. “It happens 19 times before Ms. Constand, it’s not an accident.”

Prosecutors had tried to admit 13 other women to the case last year, but O’Neil admitted only one. He never disclosed his reasoning.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Bill cosby's retrial proceeds as judge rejects motions to dismiss

The lawyers asserted that the phone records and travel schedules for Cosby and his accuser, Andrea Constand, showed the encounter could not have happened in January 2004, as Constand has said.

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