Once again, Bill Cosby has new legal representation but this time it's not to get him to avoid a trial but potentially years & years in prison.
By Dominic Patten, Deadline
With just over three months before his sentencing for assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004, Bill Cosby has given the boot to his entire legal team.
Far
from the first time that the once beloved and now much accused actor
has fired his lawyers, Deadline has learned that Pennsylvania attorney
Joseph P. Green Jr. has now been retained by Cosby. The well-established
local lawyer takes over from the high-profile team led by Tom Mesereau.
Brought on board in August 2017,
the efforts of the cable news friendly ex-Michael Jackson attorney did
not prevent a Norristown, PA jury from finding Cosby guilty of three
counts of aggravated indecent assault in a retrial that ended on April 26.
Looking
a potentially decades behind bars and amidst chatter that his wife
Camille could be seeking a divorce, the currently under house arrest
Cosby is set to be sentenced after a two-day hearing on September 24 and
25. No word yet from the new lawyer or the Montgomery County D.A.’s
office if the new representation will mean those dates are pushed back.
When
Meserau and others replaced Brian McMonagle and Angela Agrusa as
Cosby’s main lawyers after a mistrial was declared on June 17, 2017, the
retrial date was shoved back from November of that year to the spring
of this year. With a possible appeal in the making, a similar move could
happen now in regards to the sentencing hearings.
While a sudden
shift in legal reps, this latest lawyer purge by Cosby comes as no real
surprise. Having cut ties with long time attorney Marty Singer back in late 2015, Green is the fourth primary lawyer since then that the actor has hired.
How long he lasts for the 80-year old Cosby is a matter of time that could resemble the ruthlessness of a Game of Thrones plot.
Over
60 women have claimed in recent years that Cosby sexually assaulted or
drugged them, with some incidents occurring as far back the late 1960s.
He stood trial on criminal charges in Pennsylvania because the Keystone
State has a much longer statute of limitations on sex crimes than most
jurisdictions, but several other civil cases around the nation. Cosby
was arraigned December 30, 2015 in the criminal case and released on $1
million bail.
Despite admitting in depositions more than a decade
ago to giving Constand Benadryl pills on the night of the alleged
assault in his Philadelphia-area mansion nearly 13-years ago Cosby has
insisted through various investigations and two trials that the
encounter with the ex-Temple University employee was consensual. A jury
did not agree in late April.
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