THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The judge in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial gave his legal defence a huge boost Tuesday, ruling his lawyers can call a witness who says the accuser talked about framing a celebrity before she went to police in 2005 with allegations about the comedian.
Judge Steven O’Neill also helped the defence case by ruling that jurors can hear how much Cosby paid accuser Andrea Constand in a 2006 civil settlement.
O’Neill ruled that Marguerite Jackson can take the witness stand after he blocked her from testifying at the first trial — which ended in a hung jury — saying her testimony would be hearsay.
Jackson’s testimony is crucial to a defence plan to portray Constand as a greedy liar. Constand’s lawyer has said Jackson isn’t telling the truth. The judge issued one caveat to the ruling, saying he could revisit his decision after Constand’s testimony.
O’Neill also hinted during a pretrial hearing last week that he could keep jurors from hearing Cosby’s prior testimony in a deposition about giving quaaludes to women before sex. He said he won’t rule on that until it’s brought up at the retrial.
Tuesday’s rulings came ahead of the second day of jury selection in suburban Philadelphia. Cosby swung his cane and said, “Good morning, good morning,” as he walked into the courtroom.
Six more jurors were chosen Tuesday, bringing the total number seated to seven. Five of the jurors are white and two are black. The panel so far has four men and three women.
All of the jurors seated Tuesday say they’ve read media reports about Cosby’s case but haven’t formed an opinion about his guilt or innocence and can serve as fair and impartial jurors.
Cosby’s lawyers complained that prosecutors had improperly excluded two white men from serving on the jury on the basis of race and age, including one who said he thought many of the women coming forward in the .MeToo movement are “jumping on the bandwagon.”
The first juror picked Monday said he didn’t know anything about Cosby’s case. Nearly everyone else in the initial jury pool of 120 suburban Philadelphia residents indicated they knew about the charges against Cosby — including the two women picked Tuesday — and scores of potential jurors were sent home because they said they’d already formed an opinion about the former TV star’s guilt or innocence.
That left just 27 people invited back for individual questioning Tuesday as prosecutors and Cosby’s lawyers worked to fill out the panel of 12 jurors and six alternates. A second large group of potential jurors was also brought in Tuesday, in case the sides ran out of jurors from the first group.
As jury selection proceeded, The Associated Press and other news organizations challenged an arrangement that forces reporters to watch the proceedings on a closed-circuit feed from another courtroom. The camera shows the judge, prosecutors and defence lawyers, but not potential jurors who are being questioned as a group.
Cosby’s lawyers objected to having reporters in the courtroom because they feared it could hurt their ability to find a fair and impartial jury.
Montgomery County President Judge Thomas DelRicci said Tuesday he would schedule a hearing on the news media’s legal challenge.
Cosby is charged with drugging and sexually molesting Constand, a Temple University women’s basketball administrator, at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He says the encounter was consensual.
Picking a jury has proven difficult after the .MeToo movement started toppling famous men months after Cosby’s first trial ended in a deadlock.
All but one of the people in the initial group of potential jurors said they were aware of the .MeToo movement or the allegations it spurred against powerful entertainment figures. The lone person who claimed ignorance on .MeToo was not invited back.
Veteran lawyers and jury consultants say .MeToo could cut both ways for Cosby, making some potential jurors more hostile and others more likely to think men are being unfairly accused.
In all, prosecutors and the defence removed a total of 91 potential jurors before breaking on Monday.
Last year’s trial was mostly a he-said-she-said. For the retrial, O’Neill has ruled jurors can hear from five additional accusers, giving prosecutors a chance to portray Cosby — the former TV star once revered as “America’s Dad” for his family sitcom “The Cosby Show” — as a serial predator.
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.
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This story has been corrected to show that 27 potential jurors were called back Tuesday, not 28.
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Follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak
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For more on the Cosby trial, go to apnews.com/tag/CosbyonTrial