cosby trial

Bill Cosby Is Trying to Have Damning Testimony About Drugging Women Left Out of His Sexual-Assault Trial

Cosby. Photo: DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images

Despite a judge’s previous decision to have Bill Cosby’s admissions of drugging women prior to sex in a 2005 testimony used in his sexual-assault trial, Cosby is now attempting to get that testimony excluded. On Tuesday, Cosby’s lawyers requested that part of his testimony be left out because they claim its use would contradict an earlier ruling. Last month, a judge decided that only one other Cosby accuser aside from Andrea Constand, the woman at the center of this trial, can testify against Cosby, rather than the 13 women the prosecution had wanted to take the stand. The other accuser allowed to testify was not referenced in Cosby’s testimony because she hadn’t come forward at the time. Because of that ruling, Cosby’s lawyers now say the jury shouldn’t have to hear his damning testimony either if the women whom he testified about won’t be included in the trial. (Cosby had been deposed as part of Constand’s 2005 civil lawsuit against him and confessed to giving women Quaaludes and alcohol before sex, as well as paying off several of his accusers; Cosby claimed the sex was consensual.) Cosby’s lawyers argue that his testimony would be “the kind of evidence that causes ‘unfair prejudice.’” Cosby’s trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting Constand in 2004 begins June 5.

Bill Cosby Wants Damning Testimony Left Out of His Trial