Cosby attorney thought charges were off the table

In this courtroom sketch, attorneys Monique Pressley, left, Brian McMonagle, right, and Christopher Taybeck, second right, listen along with their client Bill Cosby, during Cosby’s court appearance Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016, in Norristown, Pa. Cosby was arrested and charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home in January 2004.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill pointed out he will rule on the prosecution’s motion to deny the defense’s motion to remove the district attorney’s office from the case.

Before court ended Wednesday, the judge scheduled a preliminary hearing on March 8. Two men held his arms for support as he walked up a ramp to the Montgomery County Courthouse, and one carried Cosby’s cane.

“Cosby would’ve had to have been nuts to say those things if there was any chance he could’ve been prosecuted”, Castor said, referring to the damaging testimony unsealed last summer.

Cosby, who has not entered a plea, was charged December 30 with aggravated indecent assault against Constand, who went to authorities in 2005. If not, the move would weaken other women’s assault claims against Cosby and affect another ongoing civil case in Los Angeles, in which he is facing accusations of sexually assaulting Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion in 1974 when she was 15 years old. The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, then led by a different prosecutor, reopened the investigation based on “new evidence” from that now public deposition.

Troiani says she was never told anything about a deal not to prosecute him. In it, Cosby said he gave Benadryl to Constand in 2004 but said their encounter as consensual.

The former D.A.is scheduled to testify on behalf of Cosby… saying he indeed made the promise not to prosecute.

Castor claimed he made an oral agreement not to criminally charge Cosby and added that he thought the accuser, Andrea Constand, was telling the truth though she had waited too long to come forward and had already contacted a civil lawyer in Philadelphia, weakening any case he potentially had to prosecute.

In the deposition, Cosby acknowledged obtaining quaaludes to give to women he wanted to seduce. The judged will decide whether to dismiss the case.

Here, Castor said he was clearing the way for Cosby to testify in a lawsuit that, at the time of his decision, hadn’t been filed yet. “I want them (the prosecutors who’ve charged Cosby) to win”. Schmitt acknowledges Cosby never invoked his Fifth Amendment right over four days of questioning.

The current district attorney has said he has no record of such an agreement.

USA Today said that today, on the second day of testimony, Bill Cosby’s fate could be decided.

The former district attorney, Bruce Castor, testified on Tuesday that he had declined to bring charges in 2005 that Cosby had assaulted Constand, a former employee at Cosby’s alma mater Temple University in Philadelphia, because he did not consider her case “viable”.

The suit was settled in 2006 with a confidential settlement agreement but not before a judge compelled Cosby to answer questions under oath.

Bill Cosby is expected to be back in court Wednesday in an attempt to throw out a criminal proceeding against the legendary comic. But this is the only case in which he has been charged.