Rule spares Cosby accuser testimony

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A Pennsylvania judge has denied Bill Cosby’s effort to compel the accuser in his criminal sex assault case to testify before trial. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele countered that the right of defendants like Cosby to confront their accusers in court doesn’t apply at Pennsylvania preliminary hearings. “Justice has been delayed too long”.

“We are looking forward in getting this case to trial”, said Steele.

After Thursday’s ruling, Cosby lawyer Brian McMonagle said he was confident Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court will reverse the decision.

“Today, someone who has given so much to so many had his constitutional rights trampled upon once again”. After swallowing them with a bottle of water, Constand’s knees started to buckle and she began to lose consciousness, according to court documents.

Constand, a former basketball coach at Cosby’s alma mater Temple University, has accused him of drugging her at his home near Philadelphia in 2004 and then assaulting her on a couch.

Cosby was charged with three felonies and arraigned in December, then released on $1 million bond.

The judge said the next step in the process will be to hold a pretrial conference with lawyers from both sides and set hearing dates for other possible defense motions and to also set a trial date.

Cosby was held for trial in May based on his and accuser Andrea Constand’s police statements from 2005.

Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, chose not to call Constand as a witness at a preliminary hearing in May.

“It’s our position that we’re not going to retraumatize victims”, Steele said.

“We were acting within the law”, said county Chief of Appeals Robert Falin, responding to Tayback.

The issue of whether hearsay evidence is enough to establish probable cause and move a case to trial is now the subject of legal challenges in an unrelated Pennsylvania case.

This story has been corrected to show the year of the state Superior Court ruling was 2013, not 2015.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill says the hearing raised “important” and “unique” questions but he wasn’t persuaded to contradict an appeals court decision.

He told the judge he was using a 2013 rule change to spare Ms Constand and other sex crime victims from multiple cross-examinations.

That case involves the alleged rape and sexual assault of a woman at a July 4, 2015, barbeque at a Warrington home by Maxwell L. Dolan, 20, of CT.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to review a similar case involving the use of hearsay at an evidence hearing.

On the night of January 4 2004, Cosby invited Constand, then 30, to his Cheltenham Township mansion.

The 78-year-old Cosby is accused of drugging and molesting Constand in 2004.

Constand told police the drugs left her semiconscious and unable to move. He explained at the time that there was insufficient credible and admissible evidence to result in a conviction.

The comedian’s lawyers said a lower court found probable cause this spring based exclusively on decade-old police statements, and they complained that defense lawyers had no way to challenge the allegations.

Last year, a judge unsealed the bombshell deposition testimony at the request of the Associated Press, unleashing a wave of allegations from dozens of women who came forward with their own accounts of sexual assault at the hands of Cosby. In that deposition, Cosby admitted giving Constand and other women drugs, including Quaaludes, as well as alcohol before having sex with them.

Cosby said the pills were Benadryl and that the sexual contact that night was consensual.