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Bill Cosby, defendant for sexual assault on a minor. Outside source photo.
With less than a week to go before jury selection, attorneys scrambled Tuesday to grapple with shifting evidence in the civil trial of Bill Cosby over accusations that he assaulted sexually assaulted a teenage girl at the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago.
Plaintiff Judy Huth said in a recent court filing that she now believes that aggression it happened in 1975 when he was 16 years old, not in 1974 when he was 15 years old, as he had long alleged, which caused cries of foul and a request to dismiss the case by attorneys for Cosby, who said the change has changed his defense on the eve of trial.
“It’s not fair” , Cosby’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said outside court. It’s called an ambush trial.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan gave no indication that he planned to dismiss the 8-year-old case just before a trial that is pending. determined to start as scheduled on Monday, and followed suit. go ahead with the preparations.
Cosby, 85, will not attend. none of them, his attorneys said. The case has taken on renewed importance as one of the few remaining legal actions against him after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed his criminal assault conviction. ;nbsp;in June and released him from prison, and many other lawsuits were settled against his will by his insurer.
Huth’s attorneys said the change in his story came after the investigation of the archival evidence led them to an investigation. to determine the dates that Cosby was filming the movie “Let’s Do It Again” at a Los Angeles-area park, where Huth says the two met before he took her. to the mansion.
The evidence includeda dated photo of Cosby with a beardand a tuxedo looking exactly as Huth remembered him.
The change revealed itself. in a statement that was attached to It was filed as an addendum to a May 5 motion. But Bonjean said he should have received direct service and told the judge the move was “subversive.”
One One of Huth’s attorneys, Nathan Goldberg, took offense.
“We brought it to court, was that subversive?” Goldberg said. The defense had been hiding the time of the mansion visit for a long time.
“They always knew it was 1975,” Goldberg said.
Cosby’s attorneys said they had based much of their defense at trial around the time of the trip to the Playboy Mansion, including doing everything possible to establish Cosby’s whereabouts at at that time, and base his planned questions to Huth on the witness stand around his account of the chronology
Huth’s lawsuit alleges that Cosby forced her to perform a sexual act on him in a bedroom at Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s famed Los Angeles mansion. Huth and took her to Huth. to the mansion (a photograph shows the two there together), but that she visits it happened. later when Huth was not a minor and that, there was no sexual assault anyway.
Bonjean also said that the changed story also means changes in the relevance of the law in the case, which treats 15- and 16-year-olds differently.
Not Dismissed The judge agreed with Huth’s attorneys that they should have given the defense clear notice of the time change, and ordered that the case not be delayed or the trial delayed. to Huth and a friend who is corroborating their story that they file new statements this week.
“It is extraordinarily difficult to defend yourself against an accusation from 50 years ago. Cosby in his criminal case and represents R. Kelly at her child porn trial in Chicago. “You work, you work, you work to build a defense, and then all of a sudden, at the last minute, it’s bait and bait. change”.
Huth’s attorney, Gloria Allred, refused. to comment outside of court.
Cosby made a videotaped statement early in the case, but he will not be asked to comment. have her testify at trial.
the trip to California from his home in Pennsylvania due to glaucoma that has left him blind, his representatives said.
But his absence is no indication of how vigorously he intends to fight.
“Mr. Cosby is a guy who has never settled for anything in life. He’s not going to settle for this,” Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said after the hearing.
The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been abused sexually, unless they come out publicly, as Huth has repeatedly done.
Cosby, the groundbreaking black actor and comedian, had been the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault. in the #MeToo era. The jury in his 2018 retrial found He was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a college athletic administrator. However, the conviction was later overturned.
A spate of sexual abuse allegations of this kind destroyed the city. the image of him as the & ldquo; of the United States & rdquo; and led to multi-million dollar settlements with at least eight women.