According to CNN, Montgomery County judge Steven O’Neill has ruled that the Bill Cosby sexual assault case will continue to move forward. In case you’re forgetting which among the over-50 accusations of sexual assault this case relates to, it’s that of Andrea Constand, who alleges that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004, when she was an employee of Temple University in Pennsylvania.
She’d sought justice in 2005, but at the time, it was ruled that there was “insufficient credible and admissible evidence” that Cosby had assaulted Constand in her home. The reopened, 2015 case had been facing a standstill due to Cosby’s lawyers’ assertions that ten years ago, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor had granted Cosby immunity from prosecuted in the district.
Castor himself weighed in on why he’d made this decision, saying that he had done so because, at the time, he thought it’d facilitate Constand’s success in suing the comedian, since there wasn’t enough evidence for heavier prosecution. CNN quotes Castor addressing Cosby’s attorneys: “I’m not on your team. I want them (the prosecutors who’ve charged Cosby) to win.”
The DA’s office had reopened the Constand case after new evidence emerged, when Cosby’s 2005 deposition were unsealed and released to the public in July 2015, after which, in December 2015, Cosby found himself facing three felony charges. After Cosby’s lawyers tried to bring the case to a halt with this loophole about immunity from the District Attorney, Judge O’Neill ruled yesterday that “there was no basis to grant the relief requested.”
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 8, though Cosby’s lawyers are allegedly going to appeal the court’s decision.