Once affectionately known as ‘America’s Dad’, the disgraced comedian’s legal team has scored a victory with the ruling being given that he can go ahead and fight his sexual assault conviction.
According to Time it is a decision that could test the legal framework of #MeToo cases.
Cosby, who is 82 now, has been in a Philadelphia prison for nearly two years after he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. He was convicted in 2018 and is serving a sentence of between three and 10 years.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has now agreed to review two aspects of the case.
Time stated the following: “The Supreme Court has agreed to review two aspects of the case, including the judge’s decision to let prosecutors call five other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters with the once-powerful actor and comedian. Cosby’s lawyers have long challenged that testimony as remote and unreliable. The court will also consider, as it weighs the scope of the testimony allowed, whether the jury should have heard evidence that Cosby had given quaaludes to women in the past.”
“Secondly, 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 has said he relied on that agreement before agreeing to testify in the trial accuser’s civil lawsuit.”
“Those issues have been at the heart of the case since Cosby was charged in December 2015, days before the 12-year statue of limitations expired. Prosecutors in Montgomery County had reopened the case that year after The Associated Press fought to unseal portions of Cosby’s decade-old deposition testimony in accuser Andrea Constand’s sex assault and defamation lawsuit against Cosby, which he had settled in 2006.”
A spokesman for Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, was quoted as saying that he was “extremely thankful” the court would hear the case and expose the “corruption that lies within the criminal justice system.”
