Bill Cosby’s lawyers on Tuesday appealed to seek a new trial, arguing that it was “fundamentally unfair” that the judge in his 2018 sexual assault trial allowed the filing of Cosby from a civil lawsuit against him. .
When the disgraced cabaret artist delivered this deposition, Cosby believed he had essentially immunity from prosecution, his lawyers said in court filings, an echo of an argument they had made earlier.
Cosby’s lawyers also claimed that testimony from five prosecutors about sexual incidents that occurred years earlier had wrongly condemned the jury against Cosby at the trial, which was widely regarded as one of the landmarks of the #MeToo era.
The district attorney’s office in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where Cosby was visited, did not immediately respond to a voicemail requesting comment, and it appeared that the agency had not responded to the submission on its official website as social the media channel. The Associated Press reported that an unnamed spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office had declined to comment, but said prosecutors plan to file a response next month.
Cosby, 83, has been behind bars for almost two years after a jury convicted him in 2018 of drugs and former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. He is serving a three- to 10-year sentence.
In the submission, Cosby’s attorneys allege that an earlier dismissal regarding his use of Quaaludes before sexual encounters and allegations of uncharged sexual abuse with roughly half a dozen women was “irrelevant evidence that serves no legitimate non-propensity purpose.”
The lawyers said these alleged incidents took place too long ago – in some cases in the 1970s – and claimed that they carried “no striking similarities” to the crimes for sexual assault for which he was put on trial.
Cosby was not prosecuted in 2005, but another prosecutor opened the case 10 years later after The Associated Press asked a federal judge to dismiss the case – including the former sitcom star’s testimony about sexual encounters and Quaaludes .
Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill allowed another defendant to testify at Cosby’s trial in 2017, which included the jury. O’Neill had five women testify when he was tried – and convicted – at a retrial the following year.
“The time-barred ban on evidence of bad character was effectively dismantled in Cosby’s trial,” after the court “allowed decades-old, uncharged allegations of sexual abuse,” one of Cosby’s lawyers, Jennifer Bonjean, wrote in the submitted.
“Although the evidence proposed was allowed for a limited purpose, it appears that the final argument of the prosecution’s prosecution is that the jury was asked to return a decision against Cosby based on a picture of him, not supported by really proof, like a predator who raped and raped women for years, ”the submission continues.
The end result, his lawyers argued, violated “Cosby’s right to be tried on the prosecutors, rather than on an accusation of his entire life.”
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a ruling on June 23 gave Cosby permission to appeal his convictions for sexual assault.
Constand, in a statement released that day as well, asked the state Supreme Court “to reconsider the enormous prospect of my criminals returning to the community after he was named as a convicted sexually abused a predator who has not shown remorse for his actions. “
“While everyone deserves to hear their cries and cries, even convicted criminals, if one makes his cry most right now, it is the women who have raised their voices and put themselves in the way of harm, like the previous wrongdoers. witnesses in my case, “said Constand. “They are the real heroes.”
Constand, contacted Tuesday, did not address the submission directly, but in an email reaffirmed her belief in the justice system and the need for survivors of sexual assault to “know that there are laws and laws that will protect them.” “
United Press contributed.
