Bill Cosby Fires Entire Legal Team As Sentencing Looms
EXCLUSIVE: With just more than 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 the once beloved and now much accused actor has fired his lawyers, Deadline has learned that Cosby has now retained Pennsylvania attorney Joseph P. Green Jr. The established local lawyer takes over from the high-profile team led by Tom Mesereau. Brought on board in August 2017, the efforts of Mesereau, 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 April 26.
Looking at potentially decades behind bars and amid chatter that his wife Camille could be seeking a divorce, Cosby is currently under house and is set to be sentenced after a two-day hearing September 24-25. 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 is possible ahead of sentencing.
This latest lawyer purge by Cosby comes as no real surprise. Having cut ties with longtime attorney Marty Singer back in late 2015, Green is Cosby’s fourth primary lawyer since then.
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.
More than 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 are pending. 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.
Related Video: Andrea Constand Says She Forgives Cosby
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