Bill Cosby’s final attempt to have the judge in his case replaced or recused was rejected this week, leaving the comedian to face the same judge at his sentencing hearing next week after being found guilty of sexual assault.
Cosby was convicted in April of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004 after more than a half-dozen women testified that the comedian drugged and sexually assaulted them. More than 50 women accused the 81-year-old actor of assaulting them throughout the years.
Many of these women will be in court this upcoming Monday to testify in his two-day sentencing hearing.
Cosby’s team of lawyers recently filed a motion against Judge Stephen O’Neill, who’s been the judge from the beginning of Cosby’s sexual assault trials, claiming a long-ago grudge with a pretrial witness, USA Today reports. Still, on Wednesday he denied the motion to remove himself from the trial.
Camille Cosby, the comedian’s wife, also filed a state ethics complaint earlier this week against O’Neil. In the complaint, she claims that O’Neill holds a bias against her husband due to an alleged feud with a former prosecutor who testified in an early 2016 pretrial hearing.
After being found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, Cosby faces a sentence of about one to four years. But O’Neill can choose anything from probation to a 30-year prison term for the comedian.
