Cosby appeal to test scope of #Metoo prosecutions
PHILADELPHIA — In a stunning decision that could test the legal framework of #Metoo cases, Pennsylvania’s highest court will review the trial decision to let five other accusers testify at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial in 2018, which ended with his conviction.
Cosby, 82, has been imprisoned for nearly two years after a jury convicted him of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home in 2004. He’s serving a three- to 10-year sentence.
The Supreme Court has agreed to review two aspects of the case, including the judge’s decision to let prosecutors call the other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters with the actor and comedian. Cosby’s lawyers complained the testimony is remote and unreliable.
The fifth witness to testify in Cosby’s trial, Las Vegas teacher Lise-lotte Lublin, called Cosby’s defense a “disgrace.”
“It’s just a hard place to sit and a hard place to get a hold of your emotions when you hear that someone who is such a monster is given the opportunity to prevent himself from being in jail for the things that he’s done,” she told the Review-journal on Tuesday.
Secondly, the court will examine Cosby’s argument that he had an agreement with a former prosecutor that he would never be charged in the case. Cosby has said he relied on that agreement before testifying in the trial accuser’s lawsuit.
Cosby was charged in December 2015, days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired. Prosecutors reopened the case that year after portions of Cosby’s decade-old deposition testimony in accuser Andrea Constand’s sex assault and defamation lawsuit were unsealed. The case was settled in 2006.
Review-journal staff writer Briana Erickson contributed to this report.