Judge Rejects Cosby Wife's Long-Shot Request

Camille Cosby wanted Judge Steven O'Neill to step down days before sentencing
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Sep 20, 2018 8:44 AM CDT
Judge Rejects Cosby Wife's Longshot Request
Bill Cosby arrives with his wife, Camille, for his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., in the April 2018 photo.   (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

Days before sentencing, Bill Cosby's trial judge denied a defense motion to step down from the sex assault case because of what Cosby's team called a long-ago grudge with a pretrial witness, reports the AP. Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill has seen the case through two trials, hard-fought pretrial hearings, and 15 defense lawyers since Cosby's arrest on Dec. 30, 2015. Cosby's two-day sentencing hearing is set to start Monday after a jury this spring convicted him of drugging and molesting a woman at his home in 2004. The actor, now 81 and legally blind, faces a guideline sentence of about one to four years, but O'Neill can choose anything from probation to a 30-year prison term.

Camille Cosby filed a state ethics complaint this week accusing O'Neill of bias against her husband because of what she called his feud with a former prosecutor who testified in an early 2016 pretrial hearing. O'Neill had competed against the witness, Bruce Castor, for a political post years ago. "The fact that this court sought a party nomination for the office of District Attorney nearly 20 years ago is a fact of public record that could easily be uncovered in the exercise of due diligence by no less than 15 attorneys (and their private investigators)," O'Neill wrote in an opinion issued Wednesday. "No 'grudge,' animus, bias or prejudice can be claimed because it simply does not exist," the judge wrote.

(More Bill Cosby stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X