Bill Cosby arrives at court for pretrial conference
Raw video: Embattled comedian attends preliminary hearing with new lawyers ahead of sexual assault retrial in Norristown, Pennsylvania
A judge has delayed the start of Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial to allow his new lawyers to get up to speed on the case.
Judge Steven O'Neill said Tuesday that he still expects the 80-year-old comedian to be tried before next summer.
O'Neill granted a request by Cosby's new lawyers to delay the retrial, which had been scheduled to start in November. His new legal team includes Tom Mesereau, the high-profile attorney who won an acquittal in Michael Jackson's child molestation case.
Cosby is being retried on charges that he assaulted Andrea Constand in 2004. He has said their sexual encounter was consensual.
The comedian starred as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" from 1984 to 1992, earning a reputation as “America's Dad.”
That reputation was slowly torn to pieces as dozens of women came forward, beginning in 2014, and accused him of drugging them, assaulting them or both. Their stories were all eerily similar and eventually led to the star being ostracized by Hollywood.
Before his downfall, Cosby was long-known as for his success as a comedian and actor. He won five Grammy Awards after breaking into the standup scene in ‘60s.
He then parlayed that success on TV, winning three consecutive Emmy Awards from 1966 to 1968 for his role on “I Spy.” The show elevated him to a new level of stardom and led to the eventual creation of his titular sitcom, “The Cosby Show.” In the 1998, he became known to a new generation as the host of “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”
He was also once praised as a philanthropist, and received more than 50 honorary degrees from universities across the country. Those degrees were revoked one-by-one as more women spoke out against him.
Cosby said in an interview ahead of his June trial that he was looking forward to being found innocent and he wanted to be “remembered as being the guy that they give back all the things that they rescinded.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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