Bill Cosby faces another trial in Los Angeles this week accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the 1970s.
A representative for Cosby told The Washington Post on Sunday that jury selection in the civil case could begin Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court and could last as long as a week.
The 85-year-old, legally blind, degenerate comedian will not appear in court for the proceedings, the spokesman said.
Opening arguments are expected to begin on June 1, and the trial itself is expected to last about seven days.
Legal battle less than a year later Cosby released from prison In 2004, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault convictions against Andrea Constand for drugging and sexual harassment.
In the Los Angeles case, Cosby was accused of sexually assaulting Judy Huss at the Playboy Mansion in 1975, when she was 16 or 17 years old.
Huth has previously said the alleged incident occurred in 1974, and Cosby’s team unsuccessfully tried to dismiss the lawsuit after she revised the timeline of the allegations.
While Judge David Callan wouldn’t drop the claim, he ruled last week that Cosby’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjang could again oust Huss and her friend Donna Samuelson.
Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby and crisis communicator, told The Washington Post that Samuelson was ousted on Friday and Huss will be ousted Monday night.
“This is a trial to assassinate Mr. Cosby’s estate and livelihood,” the spokesman said, adding that Cosby denies the allegations and believes he will be “proven right” at trial.
Huth’s lawsuit, filed in 2014 but repeatedly delayed, claims she and Samuelson met Cosby while he was filming in Lacy Park in Los Angeles.
The women were minors at the time, and Cosby asked them how old they were when they first met, and a few days later invited them to the mansion, warning them to pretend they were 19 if they were asked their age.
According to the original indictment, Huss alleged that Cosby harassed her in the mansion, “putting her hand on her pants, then holding her hand, and performing sexual acts on herself without consent.”
“Clearly, we deny that Mr. Cosby did anything in the Playboy mansion that would constitute a sexual assault,” Bonjean said last week.
John West, one of Huth’s attorneys, argues that his client’s claim remains within the statute of limitations under a 2019 California law that allows victims to “look back” and sue for decades-old child sexual abuse .
The judge in the case had previously ordered Playboy Enterprises to provide a list of employees from the mid-1970s to determine whether any of them could testify about how visitor logs were maintained over the years.
Cosby claims there is no evidence Huth was ever in the Playboy mansion.
Brass for Playboy told the judge on Tuesday that they had provided all the information provided under Huth’s subpoena. The company also said no staff could speak to how the visitor logs were maintained in the 1970s, which, if they still existed, could have been held by Hugh Hefner’s estate.
In June 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the indecent conditions of Cosby, who has served more than two years in prison, shocking the United States with his colossal fall in prison.
The court said a decades-long agreement with then-Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor Jr. was supposed to protect Cosby from being charged with alleged crimes, the court said. Attack on Constand.
Constand first reported the alleged encounter to Custer in 2005, and Custer made no charges in the case.
Constand then sued Cosby in civil court, and the case was settled for an undisclosed sum.
In the civil case, Castor and Cosby’s team admitted to a behind-the-scenes verbal agreement for the actor to testify against Constand’s allegations — and Cosby would never face criminal charges.
Cosby admitted in his testimony that he drugged Constand before sexually acting on her, though he said it was consensual. That testimony was later used in part to aid in the conviction.
“I think Judy’s trial may be the last stop in our defense of justice and seeing accountability in our position against Bill Cosby,” Cosby’s accuser Victoria Valentino told “New York Times”.
The Santa Monica court jury will have the final say.
