Cosby lawyers fight to limit testimony

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby made his first court appearance of the #MeToo era on Monday as defense lawyers tried without success to get his sexual assault case thrown out and then turned their attention to blocking some of the 80-year-old comedian’s dozens of accusers from testifying at his looming retrial.

Prosecutors want the judge to allow as many as 19 other women to take the stand as they attempt to show the comedian had a long history of drugging and attacking women.

They’re also trying to insulate Cosby’s accuser, Andrea Constand, from what a prosecutor called “inevitable attacks” on her credibility. Constand testified at last year’s trial that Cosby assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004, when she was a Temple University women’s basketball executive and he was a powerful Temple trustee.

Cosby has said his encounter was consensual. A jury deadlocked on the case last year, setting the stage for a retrial.

Allowing other women to take the stand will show jurors that Cosby “systematically engaged in a signature pattern of providing an intoxicant to his young female victim and then sexually assaulting her when she became incapacitated,” Assistant District Attorney Adrienne D. Jappe said.

Judge Steven O’Neill said he would not rule on whether to allow the testimony by the end of the two-day hearing, calling it an “extraordinarily weighty issue” that he needs time to review.

AP/MATT SLOCUM Bill Cosby (center) departs a pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case at the Montgomery County Courthouse on Monday in Norristown, Pa.