PHILADELPHIA _ In a decisive victory for Bill Cosby, a Montgomery County judge on Friday said he would allow only one additional accuser to testify at the 79-year-old entertainer's sexual assault trial.
In a one-page order, Judge Steven T. O'Neill offered little explanation for his decision to bar prosecutors from calling 12 other women they hoped would establish a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct by Cosby. It was not clear whether a full opinion would be coming later in the day.
The judge's ruling effectively narrows the scope of the trial, which could begin later this spring.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele had proposed a public airing of multiple instances where Cosby allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted women. Instead, the proceedings are now likely to play out largely as a he-said, she-said contest pitting Cosby's credibility against that of Andrea Constand, the case's central accuser, and the one additional woman who says in 1996 she too was assaulted in a similar way by the entertainer.
The opinion also settles � at least for the moment � what had emerged as the key legal battle in Cosby's case. The District Attorney's Office did not immediately say Friday if it would seek to appeal the ruling before trial. O'Neill has said he intends to begin it by June.
Cosby's lawyers were also not immediately available for comment Friday.
Prosecutors had argued that the 13 additional accusers they had selected to testify last year were crucial to proving that the celebrity once known as "America's Dad" was a serial sex predator.
But Cosby had strenuously fought to block them as witnesses, arguing that their allegations involving incidents that date back as far as 1964 are not only unproven but too old and too vague to disprove.
Cosby stands accused of drugging and assaulting Constand during a 2004 visit to his Cheltenham mansion.
He has maintained their encounter was consensual and denied sexually assaulting any of the women prosecutors hoped to call as witnesses.
