>
Article snippet: When Bill Cosby walks into a Pennsylvania courtroom on Monday for the opening of his sexual assault trial, the issues before the jury will concern only what he may have done 13 years ago to one woman in his stone mansion outside Philadelphia. But to his many accusers, Mr. Cosby’s trip to the Montgomery County Courthouse began decades ago in hotel rooms and other spots where they say the entertainer — once embraced as a television legend, father figure and moral force — led a less public life, they say, as a sexual predator who attacked them as well. A conviction of Mr. Cosby in what is perhaps America’s highest profile celebrity trial since that of O. J. Simpson will be seen by many of those women as vindication of their accounts. An acquittal will keep Mr. Cosby out of prison and provide some momentum to his efforts to portray the cascade of accusations as fabrications, though it is unlikely to significantly erase the stain on his legacy. [Sign up for updates on the Bill Cosby trial.] The trial, forecast by the judge to last about two weeks, will focus on charges that in 2004 Mr. Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, then a Temple University employee to whom he had become something of a mentor. Prosecutors are expected to produce three main lines of evidence: Ms. Constand’s testimony; the testimony of a second woman who says she was assaulted by Mr. Cosby in 1996; and Mr. Cosby’s own acknowledgment in a 2005 deposition that he often obtained quaa... Link to the full article to read more