Bill Cosby Case Prosecutor Asks Judge to Let Jury Hear From 19 Other Accusers

Photo

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania on Thursday asked the judge handling Bill Cosby’s retrial on sexual assault charges to allow testimony from 19 additional women who say Mr. Cosby assaulted them.

The testimony from the other women would help support the account of the chief complainant, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University basketball staff member, and, prosecutors say, help establish that Mr. Cosby was involved in a pattern of sexual assault.

For the first trial, which ended in a hung jury last summer, prosecutors had sought to introduce 13 other accusers as evidence of a pattern of sexual assault. But Judge Steven T. O’Neill, of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, allowed only one to testify, Kelly Johnson.

Judge O’Neill, who will handle the retrial in April, never detailed his reasoning so it is unclear why only Ms. Johnson’s testimony was allowed.

Ordinarily, prosecutors cannot introduce evidence or accusations of prior bad behavior from other cases because it is viewed as too prejudicial for a jury as it considers the facts of the case before it. In this instance, Ms. Constand says Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. But in Pennsylvania, as in other states, such evidence can be introduced if it shows conduct so similar it can be argued that it demonstrates a common scheme or plan, a kind of unique signature of the defendant.

So prosecutors are seeking to introduce testimony from women whose accounts resemble that of Ms. Constand in that they include accusations that they were given some incapacitating substance and then assaulted. During deliberations at the first trial, the jurors had asked the judge for a definition of the term “unconscious” as they sought to parse Ms. Constand’s testimony. In the motion Thursday, prosecutors seem to take note of that as they argued for the introduction of additional witness testimony.

“This evidence is relevant,” the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office argued in a court filing, “to establish that an individual who, over the course of decades, intentionally intoxicated women in a signature fashion and then sexually assaulted them while they were incapacitated, could not have been mistaken about whether or not Ms. Constand was conscious enough to consent to the sexual contact.”

Mr. Cosby has said his encounter with Ms. Constand was consensual. He has denied any involvement with sexual assault.

During the last trial, Ms. Johnson said that Mr. Cosby had attacked her in a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles in 1996 after having her swallow a large white pill. But she seemed hesitant on the witness stand, and some experts said that the judge’s decision to limit the testimony of other Cosby accusers was an important reason the case ended in a mistrial.

Mr. Cosby would not be prosecuted for any conduct related to any woman other than Ms. Constand.

In their motion Thursday, prosecutors asked Judge O’Neill to reconsider allowing the testimony of the women he excluded from the last trial and also to review the possible testimony of an additional six women.

Judge O’Neill’s ruling is expected in coming weeks. The retrial is scheduled for April 2 in Norristown, Pa.

Mr. Cosby’s legal team for the first trial had sought a change of venue, arguing that pretrial publicity had possibly biased potential jurors from Montgomery County, an area just outside Philadelphia where Mr. Cosby owns a home.

In the end, Judge O’Neill allowed jurors for the first trial to be chosen from Allegheny County, 300 miles west of Norristown.

For the retrial, however, Judge O’Neill has indicated that the jury will be selected from the local county. The retrial had originally been planned for the fall, but was delayed until this spring to allow Mr. Cosby’s new defense team to prepare for the case.