NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ A prosecutor seeking power, fame-hungry accusers and a celebrity-obsessed media with a voracious appetite for tabloid scandal have all contributed to the revival of "stale" sex assault allegations that landed Bill Cosby in Montgomery County Court, his lawyers said Wednesday.
As a result, attorney Angela Agrusa said, the 79-year-old entertainer faces serious disadvantages in defending himself against a case considered dead for more than a decade.
"He is not a pawn," she told Judge Steven T. O'Neill at a hearing in Norristown. "My client is not a meme. He's a human being, and his rights have been trampled on by ego and ambition."
Agrusa's argument _ the latest defense bid to have the case against Cosby thrown out _ opened the second of four hearing days O'Neill has set aside to determine what evidence prosecutors can use against the comedian at his trial next year.
The entertainer's legal team has already asked the judge to block prosecutors from showing jurors potentially damaging admissions Cosby made about his sexual past in a 2005 deposition.
Prosecutors on Wednesday also sought O'Neill's permission to call 13 other women to testify that they were drugged and assaulted in a similar fashion to the case's central accuser, Andrea Constand.
The judge did not rule on any of those requests. But he said he intends to decide soon if he will first need to evaluate the 13 accusers' testimony in person through closed interviews in his chambers next month.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele called the defense request for such a step part of a campaign by Cosby to intimidate his accusers.
He also criticized the entertainer's lawyers for publishing the women's names in public court filings _ a denouncement that drew derision from the defense.
"You want to point fingers at us and say we don't have the right to identify accusers?" Cosby lawyer Brian J. McMonagle scoffed, noting that many of the women had accused Cosby publicly in news conferences and TV interviews.
But it was Agrusa's effort to fend off the trial altogether using arguments that O'Neill had previously rejected that drew vexed expressions from the judge.
Constand first reported in 2005 that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her during a visit to his Cheltenham residence the previous year. After evaluating her claims, the district attorney at the time chose not to prosecute the case, deciding her allegations wouldn't stand up in court.
Now, 11 years later, Agrusa said, key witnesses have died, evidence has disappeared and Cosby has become too blind to identify his accusers in photographs or otherwise aid in his defense.
O'Neill appeared skeptical.
"There is no evidence in this case that Mr. Cosby doesn't have the ability to recollect events," he said. "You're taking the leap that sight equals the inability to recollect events. That's a big leap."
Agrusa responded: "He's 79 years old. He may have memory issues, too. He probably does."
As if to illustrate her point, Cosby spent much of the morning's proceedings staring at a wall, sitting with his side or back toward the judge. At one point, he stood from his chair, bent over, and appeared to stumble away from the defense table before his lawyers guided him back to his seat.
Prosecutors, too, balked at the blindness defense and objected to a doctor's report the defense submitted to prove Cosby's failing eyesight.
"It looks like something you would get from a LensCrafters walking out of a mall," Deputy District Attorney Robert M. Falin said.
Yet, Agrusa's allegation that Falin's boss, Steele, turned prosecuting Cosby into a campaign pledge to win office and then snuck in the charges days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired last year drew the strongest reaction from government lawyers.
"That man has evaded criminal prosecutions across the country," Falin said, pointing to Cosby. "No man has benefitted more from expired statutes of limitations than that man over there."
