Bill Cosby gets pair of key rulings, but not ‘#MeToo bandwagon’ juror
Bill Cosby, center, leaves hearings for jury selection in his sexual assault retrial with spokesperson Andrew Wyatt, right, Tuesday, April 3, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Bill Cosby’s lawyers scored a pair of rulings crucial to their strategy of painting his accuser as a money-grubbing liar, but they could not get the one prospective juror who seemed most willing to consider that idea.
The defense wanted a man who said he thought many of the women coming forward in the #MeToo movement were “jumping on the bandwagon,” but prosecutors used a challenge to send him home.
They agreed on six other jurors, bringing the two-day total to seven. They already have eliminated more than 200 potential jurors.
Jury selection continues on Wednesday, with a dozen people invited back for individual questioning as the prosecution and defense look to fill 11 remaining spots. A third batch of 120 potential jurors also is being brought to the courthouse in suburban Philadelphia.
No major rulings are expected after Judge Steven O’Neill opened Tuesday’s session by issuing back-to-back decisions favorable to the defense team that tried to force him off the case last month over his wife’s work with sexual assault victims.
O’Neill granted the Cosby’ team’s request to call a woman who says accuser Andrea Constand talked about framing a celebrity before she lodged allegations against him in 2005. The judge also ruled that jurors can hear how much Cosby paid Constand in a 2006 civil settlement.
Jury selection moved briskly on Tuesday until late in the day, when a second pool of potential jurors proved more opinionated and less willing to serve than the panel that produced the first seven.
Two-thirds of the group said they already had formed an opinion about Cosby’s guilt or innocence, and all but about 20 people begged off the case, saying it would be a hardship to serve.
Two of the people who made the cut said they had no knowledge of the Cosby case.
Five of the jurors picked so far are white and two are black, with four men and three women.
Cosby has pleaded not guilty to charges he drugged and molested Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He says the encounter with the former Temple University women’s basketball administrator was consensual.
O’Neill’s ruling allowing Marguerite Jackson to testify was at odds with his decision to block her from the first trial, which ended in a hung jury. O’Neill did not explain his change of heart but issued one caveat, saying he could revisit her testimony after Constand takes the stand.
During the first trial, O’Neill ruled that Jackson’s testimony would be hearsay after Constand testified she did not know the woman.
Jackson, a longtime Temple University official, has said that she and Constand worked closely together, had been friends and had shared hotel rooms several times.
Since then, prosecutors have told Cosby’s lawyers that Constand had modified her statement to acknowledge she “recalls a Margo.”
Jackson has said Constand once commented to her about setting up a “high-profile person” and filing a lawsuit.
Constand’s lawyer has said Jackson is not telling the truth.
Jackson’s availability as a witness for Cosby could be crucial to a defense plan to attack Constand’s credibility.
O’Neill hinted at a pretrial hearing last week that he might keep jurors from hearing Cosby’s testimony from a deposition in Constand’s lawsuit about giving quaaludes to women before sex — another potential boon to the defense. He said he would not rule on that until it is brought up at the retrial.
O’Neill previously gave a boost to the prosecution, ruling they can call five additional accusers in a bid to portray Cosby — the former TV star once revered as “America’s Dad” for his family sitcom “The Cosby Show” — as a serial predator.
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.
Montgomery County President Judge Thomas DelRicci scheduled a Wednesday morning hearing on the news media’s legal challenge.
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done. NVG
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