NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ Jurors in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial will hear the 80-year-old entertainer's past statements about obtaining quaaludes to use in sexual encounters with women, the judge ruled Tuesday.
Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill issued his decision in a pretrial hearing that kicked off the sixth day of testimony and as District Attorney Kevin R. Steele began barreling toward the end of the prosecution case.
Among the witnesses they still plan to call to the stand in Norristown are a drug expert and detectives who interviewed the case's chief accuser Andrea Constand and Cosby in 2005.
Cosby's statements about quaaludes come from the deposition he gave that same year as part of a lawsuit Constand filed against him. Though he would later settle the civil case for $3.4 million, Cosby said under oath at the time that he had obtained the popular party drug in the past to use in consensual sexual liaisons in the '70s.
O'Neill had allowed those statements to be introduced during the first trial, which ended with a hung jury in June, but had reconsidered the issue at the request of Cosby's new defense team.
Cosby lawyer Becky S. James argued Tuesday that the occasions involving quaaludes were too old and completely unrelated to the crimes with which Cosby has been charged.
"It just has no bearing on his knowledge of the drugs that were at issue in 2004 with Ms. Constand," she said. "There's just no connection."
Constand has alleged that Cosby drugged and assaulted her with three blue pills and then assaulted her during a 2004 visit to his Cheltenham home.
Prosecutors have never alleged that the three blue pills Cosby gave her that night were quaaludes but argued that his admissions regarding the drug show his propensity to use them in sexual encounters.
"There's only one person in the room that knows what Ms. Constand ingested that evening," Assistant District Attorney M. Stuart Ryan said.
