Pennsylvania Court Rejects Cosby’s Appeal to Overturn His Sexual-Assault Conviction

Bill Cosby’s appeal to overturn his 2018 sexual-assault conviction was rejected by a Pennsylvania court on Tuesday. Cosby’s counsel argued that five women should not have been allowed to testify at his re-trial in 2018, saying their accounts were “strikingly dissimilar” to that of Andrea Constand, who testified the year before to being drugged and sexually assaulted by the disgraced entertainer in 2004. Montgomery County judge Steven O’Neill said in a post-trial memo that the testimonies of the five additional women revealed “chilling similarities” that shows the disgraced comedian had a “signature” pattern of sexual assault. “Here, the (prior bad act) evidence established appellant’s unique sexual assault playbook,” the Superior Court stated, adding that “no two events will ever be identical.”

Cosby, 82, is currently serving a three- to 10-year prison sentence at SCI Phoenix, located roughly 20 miles from Philadelphia. His was the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era. Constand told the Associated Press that the ruling “is a reminder that no one is above the law.”