COSBY’S RETURN TO COURT CHAOTIC
Hearing turns bitter as lawyers try to sway judge
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — It took less than 10 minutes yesterday for a pivotal hearing in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case to descend into acrimony, with lawyers lobbing accusations of unethical behavior and demanding drastic action that would put the April 2 trial date in doubt.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele sought from the outset to have the 80-year-old entertainer’s newly constituted defense team — led by former Michael Jackson lawyer Tom Mesereau — thrown off the case.
He alleged that the new attorneys had lied to the court, and described some of their pretrial strategies as “at best incompetent and otherwise unethical.”
The defense shot back, claiming prosecutors had destroyed evidence and allowed their star witness, Andrea Constand, to lie under oath during Cosby’s first trial — ethical breaches so grievous, they said, that the only solution would be immediate dismissal of the case.
Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill remained unswayed by either side’s efforts, allowing the new defense lawyers to forge ahead and refusing their request to throw out the case.
Still, the bitter back-and-forth that kicked off Cosby’s first major court appearance in the #MeToo era suggested his second trial could become even more contentious than the first, which ended in a mistrial in June.
Throughout the seven hours of arguments yesterday — the first of a scheduled two days of hearings in Norristown — the lawyers danced through a series of disputes that will determine how, if at all, the evidence presented to jurors in Cosby’s retrial will differ from the earlier proceeding.
Prosecutors have renewed their bid to call several of Cosby’s other accusers as witnesses, while the defense presented a thick stack of travel and phone records that they say proves Constand’s alleged 2004 assault could not have occurred when she said it did.
O’Neill offered no indication on when and how quickly he intends to rule on how much of the new evidence he will allow to be put before a jury.
Yet despite the speed with which the tone turned hostile Monday, the judge began the hearing on a human note. He paused as he entered the courtroom to offer condolences to Cosby on the death of his 44-year-old daughter, Ensa, 10 days earlier.
“Mr. Cosby, the court does extend its sympathies,” he said.
Cosby, who sat silently through much of the rest of the hearing, quietly thanked the judge.