Bill Cosby Will Face 5 More Accusers at Retrial for Sexual Assault
A judge ruled on Thursday that Bill Cosby will face five additional women who are accusing him of sexual assault at his retrial in April, in a major decision for the case against Cosby. Last year, Cosby’s original trial ended in a hung jury, during which he only faced two accusers, Andrea Constand and Kelly Johnson. Prosecutors asked that they admit testimony from 19 additional women who say Cosby abused them; even the five additional women will aid the prosecution in establishing Cosby as a serial predator, whom they are alleging has exhibited an established pattern of drugging and assaulting victims.
The judge, Steven T. O’Neill, did not readily offer an explanation for why he decided to allow more women to give their accounts this time around. His ruling included a stipulation that the five women who will testify at the retrial be chosen from the eight most recent reported incidents. More than 50 women allege sexual misconduct by Cosby, who maintains his innocence.
Andrea Constand is a former Temple University employee, who testified in court that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. In the first trial, the defense questioned Constand, among other aspects of her allegations, about why she took a year to report the incident the police and why she continued to have contact with Cosby after the fact. The testimony from the additional five women will allow prosecutors to establish Cosby’s behavior outside of Constand’s account, possibly bolstering her version of events despite the areas in which the defense previously found weakness.
In their efforts to keep more accusers from testifying against the comedian in court, Cosby’s lawyers argued that the current media climate surrounding #MeToo and Times Up would make it nearly impossible for jurors to be non-prejudicial in deciding Cosby’s guilt or innocence. But accounts from Cosby’s accusers and rumors of his behavior have been a matter of mainstream public knowledge since at least 2014, when a clip in which comedian Hannibal Burress made a joke about Cosby raping women went viral.
Judge O’Neill’s decision is a huge boon for the prosecution, and for the women who are accusing Cosby, for whom more supportive national conversations on rape culture and victim’s rights, as the defense’s strategy shows, could potentially—ironically—be weaponized against them. Instead of ruling to protect Cosby, as his lawyers attempted, from some kind of “witch hunt” or, in their words, “prejudicial” atmosphere, O’Neill will allow women who have been speaking up long before the #MeToo movement to be heard.
