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 The 81-year-old performer, best known for his role as the
lovable family man and physician on the hit television sitcom
"The Cosby Show," was found guilty by a Pennsylvania jury in
April of drugging and sexually assaulting a onetime friend in
2004.
It marked the first such criminal conviction of a celebrity
accused of sexual misconduct since the #MeToo movement that has
brought down dozens of powerful, privileged men in American
media, politics and business since the autumn of 2017.
In September, the trial judge, Steven O'Neill, designated Cosby
a "sexually violent predator" under Pennsylvania law, requiring
the entertainer to register as a sex offender for life, and
sentenced him to a term of three to 10 years in prison.
Cosby, who is married, has insisted all along that any sexual
encounters he had were consensual. He was found guilty on three
counts of aggravated indecent assault.
In an eight-page filing laying out the basis of their appeal,
Cosby's lawyers focused on several instances they said
introduced bias into the trial, including the judge's refusal to
excuse a juror that the defense argued was unable to be fair and
impartial.
The defense asserted that the juror in question had stated an
inclination to believe Cosby guilty at the outset of the trial,
and that fellow jurors were never interviewed to determine
whether they had heard the comment or were swayed by it.
In addition, according to the filing, O'Neill failed to recuse
himself or disclose a biased relationship with Bruce Castor, a
former Montgomery County district attorney with whom defense
lawyers said the judge had a confrontation.
Cosby's lawyers have argued that Castor promised in 2005 that
Cosby would not be prosecuted if he agreed to sit for a sworn
deposition in a civil suit brought against him by his accuser,
former Temple University administrator Andrea Constand.
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That deposition, in which Cosby acknowledged giving sedatives called
Quaaludes to young women for purposes of having sex with them, was
unsealed a decade later, and Castor's successor, District Attorney
Kevin Steele, cited it as a crucial piece of evidence when criminal
charges were brought.
The judge should not have allowed Cosby's civil deposition testimony
about Quaaludes to be introduced in his criminal trial, the defense
said, arguing it was not relevant to Constand's allegations and was
highly prejudicial because it included statements regarding the
illegal act of giving a narcotic to another person.
Cosby's attorneys also faulted the judge for allowing prosecutors to
call as witnesses other accusers whose allegations, the defense
argued, were too remote in time and too dissimilar to Constand's
allegations.
Moreover, the defense asserted that a prosecution expert who
testified relied on hearsay evidence of about 50 additional women
who had leveled sexual misconduct allegations against Cosby.
Under the state's appeals process, the trial judge will write an
opinion by explaining his reasoning for the rulings the defense has
challenged, and the matter will ultimately be decided by
Pennsylvania's appellate-level Superior Court.
A representative for the prosecution did not immediately respond to
a request for comment on the filing.
(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Steve Gorman
and Peter Cooney)
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