When was Bill Cosby granted appeal for the 2018 sexual assault case against him?
PENNSYLVANIA’S highest court will review the trial decision to let five other accusers testify at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial.
The sensational 2018 retrial ended with the conviction of Cosby, now 82.
Here is more on the sexual assault case and the stunning court decision.
Who is Bill Cosby?
Cosby is a disgraced TV star who has been accused of being a sexual predator by at least 60 women.
He has had many iconic roles, but is best known for playing America’s Dad Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992.
Cosby was also the first black actor to perform in a starring dramatic role on network TV in I Spy in the 1960s, and became known for his stand-up prowess.
He was born in Philadelphia on July 12, 1937.
When was he accused of sexual assault?
Cosby was accused of sexual assault in connection with an incident that took place in 2004.
Andrea Constand filed a sex assault and defamation lawsuit against Cosby, which he settled in 2006.
Cosby was criminally charged in December of 2015, days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.
His first trial ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a decision, but Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018.
Is Bill Cosby currently in jail?
Cosby remains behind bars after being sentenced to three-to-10 years in prison.
When was he granted his right to appeal the conviction?
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would review several aspects of the case.
The state’s top court will examine a judge’s decision to let prosecutors call other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters with Cosby.
Defense lawyers have repeatedly said the testimony is unreliable.
The court will also consider whether the jury should have heard evidence that Cosby had given quaaludes to women in the past.
Additionally, 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 said he relied on that agreement before agreeing to testify in the trial accuser’s lawsuit.
Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill allowed just one of the other accusers to testify at Cosby’s first trial in 2017.
However, after the #MeToo movement exploded, the judge allowed five other women to testify at the retrial.
Lawyer Brian Perry argues that letting others testify in #MeToo cases “flips constitutional jurisprudence on its head, and the ‘presumption of guilt,’ rather than the presumption of innocence, becomes the premise.”
The judge said he had found “striking similarities” in the women’s descriptions of their encounters with Cosby.
“In each instance, (he) met a substantially younger woman, gained her trust, invited her to a place where he was alone with her, provided her with a drink or drug, and sexually assaulted her once she was rendered incapacitated,” O’Neill wrote in a post-trial opinion.
“These chilling similarities rendered (their) testimony admissible.”
Cosby admitted to a series of extramarital relationships in his deposition testimony for Constand’s lawsuit.
The actor called them consensual, but many of the women say they were drugged and molested.
Cosby recently said he has no remorse for Constand.
He had offered his support to convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein earlier this year – and thanked Snoop Dogg.
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Constand on Tuesday asked the appeals court to not allow “Cosby’s wealth, fame and fortune to win an escape from his maleficent, malignant and downright criminal past.”
Spokesman Andrew Wyatt said Tuesday that Cosby was “extremely thankful” the court would hear the case.
“As we have all stated, the false conviction of Bill Cosby is so much bigger than him – it’s about the destruction of ALL Black people and people of color in America,” Wyatt said in a statement.