Judge Must Decide If 13 Accusers Can Testify in Bill Cosby Rape Case

Summary: Bill Cosby’s defense team is fighting to stop 13 witnesses from testifying at Cosby’s upcoming criminal trial.

Prosecutors and Bill Cosby’s defense team are gearing up for the comedian’s sure-to-be explosive criminal trial. But before the date, a Pennsylvania judge must decide whether or not to let 13 accusers testify on Cosby’s alleged history of “bad acts,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Cosby, 79, is facing criminal charges for an alleged 2004 incident with former Temple University employee Andrea Constand. Constand claims that she went to see Cosby, and he drugged and raped her. He has denied her claims, stating that the sex was consensual.

Last year, Montgomery County (PA) District Attorney Kevin Steele decided to pursue Constand’s case. Since then, the prosecution has investigated nearly 50 women’s accusations that Cosby had drugged and raped them. Out of the 50, Steele would like 13 to testify in court. He argues that Cosby has a history of sexual assault, and he wants the women to testify to prove that.

“[T]hese distinctive similarities demonstrate that all fourteen incidents are so related that proof of one tends to establish proof of the other,” the prosecution’s brief stated.

Cosby’s defense team, led by Angela Agrusa and Brian McMonagle, has been battling Steele from allowing the 13 women to appear in court. The pair argue that Steele is only pursuing this case because of political reasons. They stated he needed to “go big” to win the district attorney election.

Additionally, Cosby’s legal team said that allowing the 13 accusers to testify would “breath life into a meritless case.” They stated that Constand’s case does not have enough evidence and that the prosecution is reliant on unrelated third party testimony to win.

“Accepting the Commonwealth’s arguments would ‘eliminate entirely, at least in sex cases, “one of our most fundamental and prized principles in the administration of criminal law”‘ — ‘that a distinct crime, except under special circumstances, cannot be given in evidence against a defendant who is being tried for another crime,'” Cosby’s team stated in a brief obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Cosby’s lawyers also said that the women were persuaded by feminist attorney Gloria Allred into believing they had been assaulted.

“[Allred] molded the accusers’ stories, packaged them up, spoon-fed them to the District Attorney’s Office, and manipulated the ‘screening’ by personally participating in the calls and meetings. And, District Attorney Steele allowed her to do so without conducting any independent investigation into the accusations and backgrounds of these proposed witnesses,” Cosby’s team said in their brief.

Allred told The Hollywood Reporter that the common link between the women was Cosby, not her.

Cosby’s criminal trial is slated for June of this year.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Photo courtesy of ABC News