After Bill Cosby, States Shift on Statutes of Limitations in Sexual Assault Cases

By Sydney Ember And Graham Bowley
New York Times
November 06, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/arts/television/after-bill-cosby-states-shift-sexual-assault-statutes-of-limitations.html

The lawyer Gloria Allred, right, with Lise-Lotte Lublin at a hearing in Carson City, Nev., in March 2015. Photo by Cathleen Allison

Lise-Lotte Lublin started a petition and testified before lawmakers in Nevada last year, part of a successful effort to extend that state’s statute of limitations for sexual assault.

In Colorado, where lawmakers made a similar change this year, legislators had been lobbied hard on the bill by Beth Ferrier and Heidi Thomas.

In California, it was Lili Bernard, Victoria Valentino, Linda Kirkpatrick and Janice Baker Kinney who helped organize a campaign, EndRapeSOL, and rallies as part of a movement that this fall eliminated that state’s statute of limitations for rape altogether.

The seven women live in different places and have different lives. But they were all stirred to activism, they say, by a shared history: They all say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby. And in each case, by the time they decided to come forward, many years after they say they were attacked, their ability to press for criminal charges was precluded by a statute of limitations.

None of the women will benefit directly from changes in the laws, but they said they still felt compelled to get involved.

“If I’m going to be attached to him the rest of my life, then I would like something good to come out of it,” said Ms. Ferrier, who says Mr. Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the mid-1980s.

In the last two years, at least six states have extended or eliminated their statutes of limitations on sexual assaults. Activists are seeking similar changes in at least three others.

Surfacing in many of the efforts has been the specter of accusations against Mr. Cosby, an entertainer whose legacy had long been his pioneering work in comedy and on television, but who now has also become something of a stimulus for the reform of America’s laws on sexual assault.

“Cosby’s case has spurred a lot of change,” said Rebecca O’Connor, vice president for public policy at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. “A lot of states saw the headlines coming out, and legislators had a lot of pressure coming on them to take a critical look at whether laws were limiting access to justice.”

Of course, much of the flurry of efforts is not attributable to Mr. Cosby, who has denied all of the accusations. There is a greater climate of awareness toward accusations of sexual assault evident even in the presidential race, and to the outrage sparked by individual crimes. In California, for example, the six-month sentence given this year to Brock Turner, a former Stanford University student convicted of sexual assault, unleashed a torrent of anger.

The issues raised in the various debates over legislative amendments have been substantial and go well beyond the question of whether the changes provide a measure of satisfaction to Mr. Cosby’s many accusers.

There are many defenders of strict statutes of limitation who opposed the changes that have been made. In California, under the old law, charges could not be brought unless the reported incident of rape had occurred within 10 years. Supporters said the different states’ limits encouraged timely reporting of crimes. Getting rid of them, they said, put defendants at a severe disadvantage, even risked putting innocent people in jail because of faulty memories and deteriorating evidence in old cases.

“The ability to find evidence that can support a defense 20 years later — it’s an almost insurmountable task,” said Nina J. Ginsberg, a criminal defense lawyer in Virginia who has handled a number of sexual assault cases.

“Having these really long statutes of limitations where it makes it virtually impossible to disprove what the victim is saying is grossly unfair,” she added. “Just from the defense attorney’s perspective, it’s disabling.”

This is nearly the exact position being taken by Mr. Cosby’s lawyers in Pennsylvania, where he faces charges of having drugged and sexually assaulted a young Temple University staff member, Andrea Constand, at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.

It is the only criminal case that has been brought against Mr. Cosby. It was filed last December just weeks before Pennsylvania’s existing 12-year statute of limitations on sexual assault had expired.

The prosecution in that case also hopes to introduce, in addition to Ms. Constand’s testimony, the accounts of 13 other women who say they were assaulted but whose ability to pursue the charges was precluded by the fact that they came forward too late.

Lawyers for Mr. Cosby, who is 79, argue that the delay in bringing charges and the effort to introduce the other women’s accounts are unfair. His memory and eyesight have declined, they say, preventing him from aiding his defense and his ability to produce witnesses that might support his view of events has been damaged by the passage of time. In addition, they challenge to what extent the women’s own recollections have deteriorated over time.

“Witnesses have died and evidence disappeared forever,” Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, Brian J. McMonagle and Angela C. Agrusa, said in court papers last week.

“Their stories of ‘that night spent partying with a famous celebrity’ are based solely on the tainted, unreliable memories of women, now in their senior years, recalling alleged events from a single encounter from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s.”

On the other side, experts say that women who have been sexually assaulted, especially many years ago, are reluctant to report it. Advocates say that the time limits prevent accusers from bringing criminal cases even when there is ample evidence, and that they should at least have a chance to test their cases in court.

“You tie it to the fact that you stayed silent because you were afraid,” said Charlotte Fox, who said Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her in the 1970s and who is involved in efforts to change the statute of limitations in Washington, D.C.

For her and other women who opened themselves to public scrutiny by accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault, the changes in the law feel like a victory, they said.

“It was surreal,” Ms. Lublin said about seeing the bill signed into law in Nevada. “It was absolutely empowering to know how many people this was going to affect.”

In Colorado, Mike Johnston, a state senator who was one of the sponsors of the legislation, said the bill’s success had been built atop the public stance taken by Mr. Cosby’s accusers, who, he said made it possible for other women with similar accounts to come forward.

“They were the catalyst to start this conversation,” he said.