PHILADELPHIA — A judge on Wednesday denied Bill Cosby’s latest attempt to end his sexual-assault case and rejected his request for competency testing of the 13 women who want to testify that they were drugged and violated by the comedian.
Judge Steven O’Neill hasn’t yet ruled on whether prosecutors will be allowed to call the women to the stand or on whether prosecutors can use Cosby’s 2005 deposition from a related lawsuit as evidence.
The 79-year-old entertainer once known as America’s dad for his role on The Cosby Show is scheduled to go on trial by June on accusations he drugged and molested Andrea Constand, a former employee of his alma mater, Temple University, in 2004 at his suburban Philadelphia home.
Cosby has said the encounter was consensual. He is free on $1 million bond. He could get 10 years in prison.
Another pretrial hearing is scheduled next month, when both sides will debate whether the other accusers should be allowed to testify.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said Wednesday’s rulings “get us one step closer” to trial and “furthers our pursuit of justice for the victim in our case.”
The ruling was the second time O’Neill refused to throw out the case. In February, he tossed aside the former district attorney’s claim that he had granted Cosby immunity from prosecution a decade earlier.
Cosby lawyer Brian Mc-Monagle declined to comment.
Defense lawyers had asked O’Neill to dismiss the case because they said prosecutors unfairly prejudiced Cosby by waiting until last year to file charges.
They said Cosby has memory problems, is blind in his right eye, has glaucoma in both eyes and cannot identify his accusers in photographs or otherwise help with his defense. They also portrayed him as a political pawn who is being prosecuted only because Steele used the public furor over the actor/comedian to get elected last year.
Prosecutors had argued that Cosby caused the delay in his arrest by fighting efforts by The Associated Press — in 2006 and again in 2014 — to unseal his testimony in Constand’s 2005 lawsuit.
Prosecutors said it was not until a judge revealed excerpts of the deposition last year that they learned that Cosby had admitted to a series of affairs and acknowledged obtaining quaaludes to give to women before sex.
Cosby’s lawyers say he sat for the deposition only after the then-district attorney promised the entertainer would never face arrest in the Constand case.