Less than a week after losing yet another set of lawyers, Bill Cosby was told today by the District Attorney that put him away behind bars for the 2004 rape of Andrea Constand that his latest sprawling attempt to get a new trial, a new judge or out of prison should be DOA.
“Defendant William H. Cosby, Jrs motion should be denied without a hearing,” said Montgomery D.A. Kevin Steeles office in the most restrained part of their response filed Friday to the paperwork of October 5, That quilted motion came just under two weeks after the much accused man once called “Americas Dad” was sentenced to three to ten years for the assault of the former Temple University employee.
“This is a timeworn case, and defendant has had his many days, months and years in this court,” Steele and Deputy D.A. Robert Falin also wrote, barely containing their obvious contempt for the seemingly endless tactics Cosby and his revolving door of lawyers have employed since he was first criminally charged in late 2015 in the Pennsylvania jurisdiction. “The claims he raises in his post-sentence motion do not warrant evidentiary development, several had already been rejected and they are all meritless,” the prosecutors add. in their filing of today (read it here). “It is time to move on, it is time for the appellate court to bring this case one step close to finality.”
Cosby was found guilty in an April retrial of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and facing up to 30 years, the once admired actor saw the charges collapsed into one with a maximum of a decade in state prison.
Neither Cosbys reps nor newbie attorneys Brian Perry and Kristen L. Welsenberger of Harrisburg, PA responded to request for comment on the D.A.s filing today. The often didactic actor is reportedly working on a book and has taken to playing life coach to his fellow inmates at the Keystone States SCI Phoenix facility.
Among a cascade of claims in their much expected motion of earlier this month, Cosbys now ex-lawyers Joseph Green, Jr. and Peter Goldberger asserted that a recording of a 2005 conversation between Cosby and Constands mother was “not authentic.”
Having referred to the claim as a “Hail Mary” on the day that Cosby was lead away in cuffs and chains to begin the sentence imposed by Judge Steven ONeill at the end of a two-day hearing, the D.A. now poured a bit of timeline vinegar into the apparent too many lawyers wound, so to speak.
“Even though he was aware of the tape and the opportunity to have it examined prior to the first trial, he did not choose to do so until after his conviction, more than two years later,” they state of the discussion between the actor and the Canadian-based Gianna Constand, who testified at both the 2017 mistrial and the retrial this spring. “In fact, defendant was aware of the tape and that it was incomplete, since 2005, a fact that his civil attorney, Patrick J. OConner, Esquire, acknowledged during defendants deposition,” Steele and Falin argue of now formally labeled sexually violent predator Cosby and the settled civil case that he and Constand had over a decade ago
“Thus, by any stretch of the imagination, defendant has not exercised reasonable diligence by waiting more than thirteen years to raise this issue, the D.A.s response noted a bit bloodlessly “He cannot sit on his hands during years of pretrial and trial proceedings, then decide after being convicted and obtaining new counsel that evidence hes had all along should be examined by an expert. That is not an after-discovered evidence claim; it is an ineffectiveness claim, where new lawyers second-guess the prior defense team and try something new, since their client has nothing to lose.”
Under attack again to recuse himself from the case and accused of “misconduct” by Camille Cosby, Judge ONeill will decide in the new few weeks if any of the actors claims will actually warrant a new hearing or not.
Though Cosby has admitted in depositions more than 10 years ago to giving Constand several Benadryl pills on the night of the assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion back in 2004, the actor has insisted unsuccessfully time and time again through various investigations, two trials and the sentencing hearing that the encounter with her was absolutely consensual. In interviews with law enforcement, pretrial filings, two stints on the stand in the first trial and the retrial and at the sentencing hearing, Constand, who did not instigate the criminal charges herself, has said otherwise.
Almost all of the more than 60 women that have claimed Cosby drugged and assaulted them over the decades say it was done with a similar combo of pills and alcohol. Unlike many of those women, some of whom were at the two trials and the sentencing hearing at the end of September in Norristown, PA, Cosby paid Constand millions in a once-confidential settlement about a decade before the criminal case was opened almost three years ago.
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