July 29--Of the many misconduct allegations made by women against Bill Cosby in Los Angeles over the decades, L.A. police are actively investigating only one.
It involves claims by a woman who says Cosby assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008, when she was 18.
She alleges that Cosby gave her a drink that caused her to black out. She said that when she awoke, naked on a bed in the mansion, Cosby was biting her toes with his pants around his ankles, according to her attorney.
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In January, Chloe Goins, 24, walked into LAPD headquarters and was interviewed for two and a half hours by a detective. LAPD officials say they are continuing to investigate, and prosecutors say detectives have not presented them with a case.
Earlier this year, the L.A. district attorney rejected a Cosby case presented by the LAPD, saying the event occurred decades ago.
Goins' case is more recent but also faces challenges. Under California law, the legal deadline for prosecuting most rape cases involving an adult victim is 10 years.
But Goins has not alleged rape.
In most other adult sex crimes cases, the attack cannot be older than six years, said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law professor and former prosecutor. Even charges involving the most serious sex crimes involving minors can go back only to 1988.
But legal experts said there are other reasons for the LAPD to investigate, especially if Cosby is eventually charged with a crime. California law allows victims to testify as witnesses even if their own cases never resulted in charges.
The evidence is admissible because of a change in California evidence law in 1996 that allowed witnesses to prove a pattern of behavior or a propensity to commit a crime, said Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. sex crimes prosecutor.
"Most judges would not exclude prior sexual assault evidence, so jurors generally get to hear that evidence," he said.
These supporting witnesses were used in the trial of a Pasadena track coach accused of molesting students and in the case of celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander. In the Alexander case, six women whose cases did not result in criminal charges testified against him. The designer was convicted of sexually assaulting seven women.
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