FILE PHOTO: Actor and comedian Bill Cosby is seen in this booking photo released by Montgomery County Correctional Facility, Maryland U.S., September 25, 2018. Courtesy Montgomery County Correctional Facility/Handout via REUTERS
(Reuters) – Bill Cosby lost his appeal to overturn his 2018 sexual assault conviction on Tuesday when a Pennsylvania appeals court rejected his lawyers’ argument that the trial judge had deprived him of a fair trial, a court filing showed.
Dozens of women have accused Cosby, who was once best known for a family-friendly brand of comedy that presented him as the lovable father in the 1980s television series “The Cosby Show,” of sexual assault over several decades.
He became the first celebrity to be convicted in the “#MeToo” era when a jury found him guilty in April 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home in 2004.
Cosby has insisted that any sexual encounters he had were consensual.
Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis
