PHILADELPHIA _ A federal appeals court in Philadelphia on Monday denied Bill Cosby's request to reseal excerpts from a 2005 deposition in which he discussed his extramarital affairs and the use of drugs to seduce young women.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit declared moot the question over the documents' release, which reignited controversy about the 79-year-old entertainer's alleged sexual misconduct and led in part to the criminal charges filed against him last year in Montgomery County.
"The contents of the documents are a matter of public knowledge," Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. "We cannot pretend that we could change that fact by ordering them resealed."
Cosby's had requested that the court overturn an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno that opened up several previously sealed court filings from a 2005 sexual battery lawsuit filed against him by accuser Andrea Constand.
The former operations manager for Temple University's women's basketball team is also the chief witness in the Montgomery County criminal case.
Cosby repeatedly has denied her allegations that he drugged and assaulted her while she visited him at his Cheltenham mansion in January 2004. In 2006, he and Constand settled their lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
The deposition excerpts, in which Cosby discussed his giving of Quaaludes to young women with whom he had sex, have been widely reported, and a full transcript of the deposition has since been leaked to numerous news outlets since Robreno's order last summer.
His attorneys had argued that even though it was too late to stop further dissemination, an order from the appeals court resealing them could provide vindication for Cosby, who maintained that they never should have been released in the first place.
He also hoped a resealing order would prevent lawyers in his criminal case or the several civil suits he faces from a number of other accusers from using the excerpts against him in upcoming trials.
In his opinion Monday, Ambro wrote that the court took no position on whether Robreno was right or wrong to unseal the documents in the first place.
Cosby remains free on $1 million bail pending trial on a charge of aggravated indecent assault. Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill as not yet set a date for his trial.
