Bill Cosby Gets Appeal in Pennsylvania Sex Assault Case

In a stunning decision that could test the legal framework of #MeToo cases, comedian Bill Cosby has won the right to fight his 2018 sexual assault conviction in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The 82-year-old Cosby has been imprisoned in suburban Philadelphia for nearly two years after a jury convicted him of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home in 2004. He is serving a 3- to 10-year sentence.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review two aspects of the case, including the judge's decision to let prosecutors call five other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters with the once-powerful actor and comedian. Cosby's lawyers have long challenged that testimony as remote and unreliable. The court will also consider, as it weighs the scope of the testimony allowed, whether the jury should have heard evidence Cosby had given quaaludes to women in the past.

Secondly, the court will examine Cosby's argument he had an agreement with a former prosecutor he would never be charged in the case. Cosby has said he relied on that agreement before agreeing to testify in the trial accuser's civil lawsuit.

Those issues have been at the heart of the case since Cosby was charged in December 2015, days before the 12-year statue of limitations expired. Prosecutors in Montgomery County had reopened the case that year after The Associated Press fought to unseal portions of Cosby's decade-old deposition testimony in accuser Andrea Constand's sex assault and defamation lawsuit against Cosby, which he had settled in 2006.

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