UNITED STATES
Vogue
March 16, 2018
By Bridget Read
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.
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