Bill Cosby’s damaging deposition can be used at his sex trial after the judge overseeing the criminal case issued a new ruling on Monday.
The ruling denies Cosby’s motion to abolish the testimony he gave during a deposition in 2005, including any evidence that came as a result of its content, ABC News reported.
The judge’s ruling comes after Cosby’s lawyers had requested that the court refrain from using the deposition in the trial, arguing that the entertainer sat down for the deposition only after being told by a district attorney that he would not be prosecuted as a result, ABC News noted.
However, the judge rejected that request.
“There is no basis in the record to support the contention that there was ever an agreement or a promise not to prosecute the defendant,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill wrote, per ABC News.
The accounts the famous comic gave at his deposition did not strengthen his case in terms of public opinion, as he admitted to having affairs and giving women drugs before having sex with them, CNN reported.
“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything,” Cosby said in a deposition about a sexual encounter he had with Andrea Constand, per ABC News. “And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.”
Cosby, 79, also talked about giving women Quaaludes in the 1970s, NBC News noted.
“Quaaludes happen to be the drug that kids, young people were using to party with and there were times when I wanted to have them just in case,” he said, per NBC News.
“When you got the Quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” an attorney asked.
Cosby replied, “Yes.”
Bruce Castor, the district attorney at the time, said he made the promise to eliminate Cosby’s ability to use the Fifth Amendment in the deposition because that would have enabled him to avoid certain questioning, CNN noted.
Kevin Steele, the current district attorney, defended the court’s ruling, stating that there was never any formal non-prosecution agreement. Instead, there was only a press release, CNN noted. He added that witnesses are the only ones who could receive this kind of immunity in a trial, not a defendant.
Judge O’Neill will still, however, have to decide if the 13 other women, who have said they were also assaulted by Cosby, will be allowed to testify in court, ABC News noted.