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      Lawyers Make Closing Arguments in Bill Cosby Sex Assault Trial

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      The jury in the civil case brought by a woman who says Mr. Cosby molested her when she was 16 is expected to begin deliberating on Thursday.The jury in the Bill Cosby sex assault trial is expected to begin deliberations on Thursday after being presented starkly different accounts on Wednesday of what had happened to a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles some 47 years ago.In his closing argument, Nathan Goldberg, a lawyer for Judy Huth, who brought the suit, told the 12-person jury that Mr. Cosby had schemed to isolate and take advantage of the teenager, and that she had paid a painful price over a lifetime of anxiety and depression. That anxiety intensified, she has said, around the time many other women were coming forward with accusations against Mr. Cosby in 2014, and diminished in 2018 when he was found guilty in a criminal case in Pennsylvania.“His behavior involved planning and intent to get her to a vulnerable location,” he told the jury impaneled to decide the civil case in Santa Monica, Calif. “If you believe she was molested by Mr. Cosby, he has to be held fully accountable. Four years of misery, what’s that worth to a person?”Mr. Goldberg said the jury should consider carefully the testimony of Donna Samuelson, a friend at the time who had accompanied Ms. Huth to the mansion and corroborated Ms. Huth’s testimony. He also pointed to the testimony of two other women whom Ms. Huth’s team had produced as witnesses and who described encounters with Mr. Cosby in 1975, the year Ms. Huth said she met him.Mr. Goldberg said that Mr. Cosby’s defense amounted to implying that all four women were “in on it” and lying.The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She took the stand in June and described the encounter with the entertainer that she says led to her assault.Line of Defense: Mr. Cosby’s team has attempted to discredit Ms. Huth’s recollection of her encounter with the defendant and accused her of lying about it.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier.His Release From Prison: After the conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.But in their closing statement, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers said that, far from being a victim, Ms. Huth was an unreliable witness — one who had blatantly made up an account of assault and coordinated her story with her friend, Ms. Samuelson, before coming forward to file the lawsuit in 2014.“I don’t think you can believe anything Ms. Huth says, frankly,” said Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby.She said that Ms. Huth could not demonstrate that there had been sexual contact, and her lawyers had not met the burden of proof to show that the distress she reported suffering later in life was caused by any encounter with Mr. Cosby.Mr. Cosby has denied having any sexual contact with Ms. Huth. His lawyer said that it would have been acceptable if Mr. Cosby had been attracted to her because, she said, the two friends had looked like adult women.“She cannot demonstrate that there was causation between this incident and the alleged trauma 40 years later,” Ms. Bonjean said.“I am not going to credit her just because we live in a time where, if she says it, it must be true,” she added. “There’s no evidence.”Ms. Huth, now 64, and Ms. Samuelson have said they were invited by Mr. Cosby, now 84, to join him at the mansion several days after meeting him on a film set that they had come upon in a park not far from their homes.Ms. Huth said Mr. Cosby invited them to his tennis club, then gave them alcohol at a house where he was staying. She said he then asked them to follow him in their car to the mansion, where, in an isolated bedroom, he tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to perform a sex act on him.When it begins its deliberations, the jury will be asked to decide its verdict based on a preponderance of the evidence. Only nine of the 12 will have to agree on a finding to reach a verdict, unlike the unanimity required in a criminal case.In an effort to highlight inconsistencies in the testimony against their client, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers emphasized, as they had earlier in the trial, that an arcade game, “Donkey Kong,” Ms Samuelson said she had played at the mansion was not released until several years later. Ms. Samuelson said she simply got the name wrong.In his closing remarks, Mr. Goldberg said, “This is not a game.“We have a client,” he continued, “who was sexually molested by Bill Cosby at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. Now it’s your turn to hold him accountable. Justice does not know how much time has passed. It knows what is right and wrong.” More

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      Nipsey Hussle Murder Trial: What to Know

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      More than three years after the Los Angeles rapper was shot and killed, the trial of Eric Holder Jr., the accused gunman, is finally underway.More than three years after the fatal shooting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle, a proudly local Los Angeles artist whose killing reverberated far beyond the world of West Coast hip-hop, the trial of the accused gunman, Eric R. Holder Jr., is finally underway. Jury selection in the case, which had been repeatedly delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, began on June 2. Opening arguments are expected to start this week, with the trial likely to last about four weeks.Hussle, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, was shot and killed on March 31, 2019, outside a clothing store he owned in South Los Angeles, with the police soon attributing the attack to a personal dispute. Two days after the shooting, which also wounded two bystanders, Mr. Holder, then 29, was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a felon. He pleaded not guilty and has since been held in lieu of $6.5 million bail.According to court records, Los Angeles County prosecutors plan to argue that Mr. Holder and the 33-year-old Hussle, two old acquaintances who belonged to the same street gang, had a chance encounter in a strip mall parking lot, during which the rapper mentioned neighborhood rumors that Mr. Holder had cooperated with law enforcement — “a very serious offense” in the gang world. Minutes later, prosecutors say, Mr. Holder returned with two handguns and began firing repeatedly. Here is what else to know about the case.Who was Nipsey Hussle?A workmanlike rapper with underground credentials and an A-list network of supporters, Hussle was more than 15 years into his music career when he released his proper debut album in 2018. Before the Grammy-nominated “Victory Lap,” Hussle had built a career that was richer in industry respect and good will than hit records, though he collaborated widely with artists like Snoop Dogg, Drake and Rick Ross. Known for his independent business ethos and novel marketing ideas, like the limited-edition $100 mixtape “Crenshaw,” Hussle had partnered with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management company as he eyed a move toward the mainstream.A self-proclaimed member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, Hussle had also made a name for himself as a community ambassador and an entrepreneur in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. While seeking to stem gang violence in the area, he preached Black empowerment through business ownership, reinvesting his earnings as a musician in the place where he grew up.With a group of backers, Hussle had bought the strip mall at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue that housed his Marathon clothing store, while also helping to open a nearby co-working space dedicated to increasing diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.At the same time, even as Hussle was praised after his death as an inspirational neighborhood fixture and a peacemaker, his properties were the subject of a longstanding investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and the city attorney’s office, which considered the area a Rollin’ 60s stronghold.Some 20,000 people attended Hussle’s public memorial at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where a statement from President Barack Obama highlighted the rapper’s life as “a legacy worth celebrating.”After his killing in 2019, mourners held a vigil ouside his Marathon clothing store.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesWhat happened on the day of the shooting?That Sunday afternoon, according to grand jury transcripts, Hussle arrived at the shopping plaza for an unannounced visit, as he often did. While catching up with neighborhood friends and employees in the parking lot in front of his Marathon store, Hussle spent about half an hour signing autographs and posing for photos with fans.At the same time, a woman Mr. Holder was casually dating was driving him around the area just to hang out, the woman testified to the grand jury in 2019. As they stopped to get something to eat, the woman noticed Hussle outside the store and remarked in passing that he looked handsome, she said. Mr. Holder did not indicate that he knew the rapper, but approached him for a brief conversation after ordering chili cheese fries at a nearby burger place while the woman waited in the car.“Apparently the conversation had something to do with Mr. Asghedom telling Mr. Holder that word on the street was that Mr. Holder was snitching,” John McKinney, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, told the grand jury, citing witnesses. “The conversation wasn’t particularly intense, it wasn’t particularly belligerent, and it lasted for about four minutes.”Hussle, the witnesses said, seemed to be looking out for Mr. Holder, telling him he needed to address the rumors. When Mr. Holder asked Hussle and those around him if they had heard the music he had been working on, they said they had not. As the men finished speaking, the woman driving Mr. Holder approached Hussle for a selfie, which she soon posted to Facebook.Upon returning to the car, Mr. Holder told the woman to pull into another nearby parking lot so he could eat his fries, she said. After a few bites, he loaded a 9-millimeter pistol, she testified, and walked back toward Hussle’s store. According to witnesses, Mr. Holder confronted the rapper and said, “You’re through” as he opened fire with a gun in each hand, hitting Hussle at least 10 times and then kicking him twice in the head.“You got me,” Hussle said, according to court testimony. Two other men, Kerry Lathan and Shermi Villanueva, were wounded by the gunfire.How was Eric Holder identified as the suspect?Recognized in the neighborhood as another member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, Mr. Holder was better known by his nickname, a descriptive epithet. Surveillance footage captured the shooting, in addition to the car he used to flee the scene, and the police soon publicized the information. Upon seeing her vehicle on the news, the woman who had been with Mr. Holder submitted to a five-hour interview with police officers, along with searches of her car and her mother’s home, where Mr. Holder had spent the night of the shooting before moving to hide out at a Motel 6.The woman later testified that she had heard the gunshots but was confused about what had occurred until she saw coverage of Hussle’s death online. When Mr. Holder first returned to the car, she recalled, “He’s like, ‘Drive, drive, before I slap you.’” The woman declined to press him on the specifics of what happened out of fear, she said.That Tuesday, two days after the shooting, Mr. Holder was arrested without incident in Bellflower, Calif. The murder weapons were never found.The woman, whose identity has been kept secret to protect her from threats and harassment, later agreed to immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony at trial. She is expected to be among the prosecution’s key witnesses.What is Mr. Holder’s defense?Mr. Holder was originally represented by Chris Darden, a lawyer perhaps best known as one of the prosecutors in the 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson. But Mr. Darden soon withdrew from the case, citing death threats against his family. Instead, Mr. Holder will be represented at trial by a public defender, Aaron Jansen, who said in an email that he plans to argue that the case was “overcharged.”“Mr. Eric Holder, Jr. should not have been charged with First Degree Premeditated Deliberate murder in the unfortunate death of Mr. Asghedom,” Mr. Jansen wrote. “Similarly,” Mr. Jansen added, he should not have been “charged with First Degree Attempted Murders of Mr. Lathan and Mr. Villanueva. Mr. Holder, Jr. did not know either man, had no beef with them, and certainly did not have the intent to kill either gentleman.”The lawyer has also alluded to Mr. Holder’s struggles with mental health, noting that the defendant was on a high dosage of medication and had been treated with electroshock therapy “as a last resort to help him.” Whether Mr. Holder will testify, the lawyer said, is his client’s decision. He faces life in prison. More

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      Woman Testifies That Bill Cosby Kissed Her When She Was 14

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      She testified at a civil trial in Los Angeles brought by another woman accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault. A spokesman for Mr. Cosby denied all the accusations against him.Kimberly Burr testified Friday that she was 14 years old when Bill Cosby invited her into his trailer on a film set in Los Angeles in 1975 and started kissing her.Ms. Burr was testifying in the civil trial in Los Angeles where Mr. Cosby has been sued by another woman, Judy Huth, who has accused Mr. Cosby of sexually assaulting her that same year, when she was also a teenager.Ms. Burr, who is now 61, said that she had met Mr. Cosby at a tennis tournament in Palm Desert that year, where he had invited her to the set of the film “Let’s Do It Again” in Los Angeles with the promise of being an extra. While her mother and other members of her family waited outside, she said, he led her into his trailer to help him fix his bow tie, where he grabbed both her arms and started kissing her.“I was stuck,” Ms. Burr told the court. “I was struggling, trying to get away.”When he let go, she said, she “walked right out of the trailer down the steps” and didn’t tell her family because she didn’t want to ruin the day for them.During cross-examination, Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, challenged her account, asking how, after such a traumatic experience, she could have kept photographs in the family home of the meeting showing Ms. Burr and her brother with Mr. Cosby. “Did it bother you that they were there?” she said.A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, dismissed the testimony. “These are just allegations made up to support Judy Huth, whose claims are not factual at all,” he said in an interview.Ms. Huth’s case is the first civil suit accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. In her lawsuit, Ms. Huth says that she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Cosby at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975, when she was 16, after she and a friend met him in a park where he was filming “Let’s Do It Again,” the same movie he was working on when he met Ms. Burr.The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.Days after their meeting, Mr. Cosby invited Ms. Huth and her friend to his tennis club, Ms. Huth’s lawyers have said, where Ms. Huth played a game where she had to drink alcohol every time he won at billiards, and then they both followed him in their car to the Playboy Mansion. Once there, Ms. Huth has said, Mr. Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom.Mr. Cosby has denied he sexually assaulted Ms. Huth, or any of the other women who have come forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual misconduct.More than 50 women have accused Mr. Cosby of sexually abusing them. This was the first time Ms. Burr has spoken publicly.As Ms. Huth’s lawyers have sought to demonstrate a pattern of behavior and abuse by Mr. Cosby, they called another witness, Margie Shapiro, 65, who had already come forward with accusations in 2015.Ms. Shapiro testified that she was 19 in 1975 when Mr. Cosby met her at the doughnut shop where she was working and invited her to the set of another movie he was filming in Los Angeles. Later that day, they went to the Playboy Mansion, where, she said, he drugged and assaulted her. She said that they had played pinball together in the game room at the mansion, and that he had offered her a pill after she lost. She said she remembered waking up: “My next memory was foggy, but I was in a bed naked and Bill Cosby was naked, inside me,” she said.She said she told a friend what had happened but never went to the police. “I felt I went there consensually, I took a pill and he’s him and I am me,” she said. “I felt stupid because I felt at the time I put myself in that situation.”Mr. Cosby’s spokesman, Mr. Wyatt, issued a statement Friday afternoon which said that the accusers were “discrediting themselves” and questioned their accounts. “Since we stand on the foundation of truth and facts,” he said in the statement, “we believe that Mr. Cosby will be vindicated of ALL allegations in order to move forward with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”In challenging Ms. Shapiro’s account in court, Mr. Cosby’s legal team questioned whether she was working at the doughnut shop on the morning she said she met Mr. Cosby, and whether she went to the Playboy Mansion. They acknowledged that Ms. Shapiro went to Mr. Cosby’s house, but they insisted that the relationship was consensual. Ms. Shapiro said she stood by her account.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have noted in court proceedings that Ms. Huth’s recollection of when her encounter took place has changed: While she initially said it happened in 1974, when she was 15, she more recently concluded it was in 1975, when she was 16. The law in California classified a 16-year-old as a minor. In disputing Ms. Huth’s account, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have suggested they met years after the time she said they did, when she was no longer a minor.In their opening remarks, his lawyers sought to discredit Ms. Huth’s account by pointing out that she and the friend who accompanied her to the Playboy Mansion stayed for hours after the alleged encounter with Mr. Cosby, swimming in the outdoor pool and watching a movie.The friend, Donna Samuelson, has testified that Ms. Huth was distraught and wanted to leave but Ms. Samuelson persuaded her to stay.Ms. Huth’s lawsuit, which she filed in 2014, had largely been put on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued Mr. Cosby criminally on charges that he sexually assaulted Andrea Constand.Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction in that case was overturned last year by an appellate court, which ruled that a non-prosecution agreement he made with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case. Mr. Cosby walked free after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.Mr. Cosby, 84, is not scheduled to testify and has not attended the opening days of testimony, but his deposition testimony is expected to be played in court.Ms. Huth, 64, who has been in attendance, is intending to give her account to the jury. More

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      What to Know About Bill Cosby’s Civil Trial on Sexual Assault Accusation

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      Ms. Huth has sued Mr. Cosby, asserting that he sexually assaulted her in the 1970s when she was a teenager.Bill Cosby is being sued by Judy Huth in civil court in Los Angeles. The trial started Wednesday after a jury was selected last week.Ms. Huth has accused Mr. Cosby, 84, of sexually assaulting her as a teenager and sued him in 2014. But the civil suit was largely put on hold while Mr. Cosby was being criminally prosecuted in another case where he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand.Mr. Cosby’s criminal conviction in the Constand case in Pennsylvania was overturned last year by an appellate court, and he was freed from prison.Ms. Huth’s case is being followed by some of the many women who have accused Mr. Cosby of sexual misconduct, in part because it is the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial.Mr. Cosby has denied sexually abusing Ms. Huth and the other women who have made that accusation against him, suggesting any sexual encounters were consensual.The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has now reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.What does Ms. Huth say happened?In court papers, Ms. Huth says that she and a friend met Mr. Cosby in 1975 when they wandered onto a movie set in a park in San Marino, Calif., where Mr. Cosby was shooting a film.Days later, at his invitation, they went to his tennis club, she says in court papers, where he gave her and her friend alcohol before taking them to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. There, Ms. Huth says in her lawsuit, he forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom. She says Mr. Cosby tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to fondle him.What does Mr. Cosby say?Mr. Cosby acknowledges meeting with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion but denies her allegation of sexual battery and has challenged her contention that she was a minor at the time.His lawyers have pointed out in court proceedings that Ms. Huth’s recollection regarding when the encounter occurred has changed. She initially said that it had happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently she concluded that it was actually in 1975, when she was 16, according to court papers. The law in California, then and now, holds that a 16-year-old is classified as a minor, but Mr. Cosby has contended that he did not meet Ms. Huth until several years later.Why is this a civil trial?In 2014, when she filed the civil case, Ms. Huth also reported her accusation to the police. But the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.Ms. Huth was able to file a lawsuit because under California law, in some cases, the statute of limitations can be extended for adults who contend they were victims of sexual abuse as children but repressed the experience.In 2020, California law was amended to further extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault filings in civil court.Is Mr. Cosby facing other civil suits?The civil case is one of the last unsettled lawsuits against Mr. Cosby.He has already faced multiple other civil cases filed against him by women, many of whom sued him for defamation after his legal team dismissed as fictions their accusations of sexual misconduct by him. Eleven civil cases ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements having been agreed to by Mr. Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, according to his spokesman.Mr. Cosby also settled a civil case Ms. Constand brought against him in 2006 for $3.4 million.One other ongoing civil case was filed last year by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990, when she was 26. Mr. Cosby has denied her account. The Bernard case is still in its early stages.Why was Mr. Cosby released from prison?Mr. Cosby was found guilty in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting another woman, Andrea Constand, at his home near Philadelphia and was given a three to 10 year sentence in state prison.But that conviction was overturned last year on due process grounds. An appeals court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.How does this civil case differ from the criminal case?In this civil case in Los Angeles Superior Court, the burden of proof is lower than in a criminal trial. It will be in front of a 12-person jury, with at least nine of 12 votes needed for a verdict. It is expected to last seven to 10 days. Ms. Huth is seeking damages.Mr. Cosby has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify and will not attend the trial, his spokesman has said. Ms. Huth is expected to testify, as is the friend who she has said accompanied her to the Playboy Mansion in 1975. More

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      Lawsuit Accusing Bill Cosby of Sexual Assault Heads to Trial

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      A civil suit accusing Mr. Cosby of assaulting a teenager in the 1970s, which he denies, will be the first to head to court since his criminal conviction was overturned last year.Judy Huth met Bill Cosby when she was still a teenager, she has recounted in court papers. It was the mid-1970s, and Mr. Cosby had already had his breakthrough on the TV series “I Spy” and become a movie star, but was still years away from his huge success on “The Cosby Show.” Ms. Huth and a friend spotted him on a film set in a park in San Marino, Calif., and ended up meeting him in person, according to her court filings.Days later, she asserts in the filings, she went to Mr. Cosby’s tennis club at his invitation, where he gave her and her friend alcohol before taking them to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, where she accuses him of forcing her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom. Mr. Cosby has described her account as a fabrication since the case was first filed in 2014.This week the job of deciding who is credible will fall to a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court, as the civil trial of Mr. Cosby on Ms. Huth’s accusations that he sexually assaulted her is scheduled to get underway.Ms. Huth’s recollection regarding when the encounter occurred has changed. She initially said that it had happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently she concluded that it was actually in 1975, when she was 16, according to court papers. Since the beginning, she has said in court papers that she recalled Mr. Cosby telling her and her friend to claim they were both 19 if asked at the mansion.The change of dates has led Mr. Cosby’s team to further dispute her account. Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in a statement that Ms. Huth had “made inconsistent statements since the inception of filing this civil suit against Mr. Cosby.” Ms. Huth has said that recently released information supplied by Mr. Cosby’s team had led her to reconsider what year it occurred.Judy Huth, left, in 2015 with her attorney, Gloria Allred.Anthony McCartney/Associated PressThe civil case, one of the last unsettled lawsuits against Mr. Cosby, was largely put on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued the criminal case that resulted in his 2018 conviction on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. But the conviction was overturned, and Mr. Cosby was released from prison last year when an appellate panel found that his due process rights had been violated when prosecutors ignored an assurance from a prior district attorney that Mr. Cosby would not be prosecuted.With the criminal case overturned, the significance of Ms. Huth’s suit has risen in the minds of some of the many women who have accused Mr. Cosby of being a sexual predator.“I think that Judy’s trial may be our last stand for justice and seeing accountability come to fruition in our stand against Bill Cosby,” Victoria Valentino, who says Mr. Cosby drugged and raped her in Los Angeles in 1969, said in a text. (Mr. Cosby has denied all allegations of sexual assault, and said any encounters were consensual.) She said she plans to attend part of the trial, which, barring a last-minute settlement, is set to begin with jury selection this week and opening arguments expected June 1.Patricia Steuer, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that she saw the Huth civil trial as a chance to get a measure of justice. “There is no other recourse at the moment,” she said. “It probably is the only avenue available.”Mr. Cosby, now 84, has already faced multiple other civil cases filed against him by women, many of whom sued him for defamation after his legal team dismissed as fictions their accusations of sexual misconduct by him. Eleven civil cases ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements having been agreed to by Mr. Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, according to his spokesman.Ms. Huth’s lawsuit is poised to become the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. In court papers, Ms. Huth says that in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion, Mr. Cosby tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to fondle him.Ms. Huth filed her suit in December 2014, at a time when Mr. Cosby was facing allegations by many women who said he had drugged and sexually assaulted them, in incidents spanning several decades.She also reported her accusation to the police, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.Her lawyers argued that the period for a civil claim had not expired, however, because in California it is extended for adults who say they were victims of sexual abuse as minors but repressed the experience. The deadline to file such a suit is determined in part by when the person, as an adult, becomes aware of the severe psychological effect of the abuse, her lawyers said.In 2020, California law was amended to further extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault filings in civil court.Ms. Huth’s revised timeline, which says Mr. Cosby assaulted her when she was 16 rather than 15, should not affect her ability to pursue the suit since the law views a 16-year-old as a minor, Ms. Huth’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers argued in legal papers that they felt ambushed by the sudden change in Ms. Huth’s account. They said that their research had been geared toward establishing Mr. Cosby’s and Ms. Huth’s whereabouts in 1974, and said they had prepared evidence to show that the entertainer was not at the Playboy Mansion in the period she suggested in 1974.Log books from the Playboy Mansion for 1974 do not list either Ms. Huth or her friend as having visited, according to Mr. Cosby’s lawyers.At a hearing last week, the judge asked Playboy to produce records for 1975 and agreed that Ms. Huth and the friend who accompanied her should sit for a further deposition before the trial begins.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have also questioned whether she had only remembered the alleged abuse a short time before filing the suit because, they said, she had contacted a tabloid about it 10 years earlier.Mr. Wyatt, the spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in the statement, “We feel confident that the Playboy records along with Ms. Huth changing her timeline of events from 1974 to 1975 in the 11th hour will vindicate Mr. Cosby.”Mr. Cosby acknowledged meeting with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion, and Ms. Huth has produced photographs of them together that she said were taken there, according to court papers. But he has denied that she was a minor when they met.“While defendant does not deny that he socialized with plaintiff at the Playboy Mansion, as he did other women and men who frequented the club,” his lawyers said in court papers, “defendant vehemently denies that plaintiff was underage.”Ms. Huth has said that she changed the timeline of her account in part because she only recently realized, as a result of documents put forward by Mr. Cosby, that the filming of the movie “Let’s Do It Again,” where she says they met, took place later than she had recalled.The trial is expected to last two weeks, and Ms. Huth, who is seeking damages from Mr. Cosby, is expected to testify, along with the friend who accompanied her to the Playboy Mansion. Mr. Cosby has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify. He will not attend the trial, Mr. Wyatt said.During pretrial hearings, Ms. Huth had asked for a bench trial, but the trial will be in front of a 12-person jury, with at least 9 of 12 votes needed for a conviction.Mr. Cosby settled a civil case Ms. Constand brought against him in 2006 for $3.4 million. The other civil cases were settled for undisclosed terms by the insurance carried on Mr. Cosby’s home policy, which provided “personal injury” coverage in a range of circumstances, including lawsuits that accused the policy holder of defamation.The other ongoing civil case against Mr. Cosby was filed last year by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990, when she was 26. She was able to file the suit, which is still in its early stages, because in 2019 New Jersey overhauled its laws on the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases, extending the time limit for filing suits and creating a special two-year window allowing people to bring cases regardless of how long ago the alleged assaults might have occurred. More

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      in Theater

      Singing, and Signing, Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’ in Los Angeles

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      The Los Angeles Philharmonic and Deaf West Theater are working on an innovative production conceived for both hearing and deaf operagoers.LOS ANGELES — DJ Kurs has been the artistic director of the Deaf West Theater, a theater company created here by deaf actors, for the past 10 years. But he had never seen the Los Angeles Philharmonic or been to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, its renowned home, even though he grew up in Southern California.He will be there this week, though, leading seven actors from Deaf West in an innovative production of “Fidelio,” Beethoven’s opera about the rescue of a political prisoner, in a collaboration with a cast of singers and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The actors — along with a chorus from Venezuela whose members are deaf or hard of hearing and will also be signing — will be center stage on opening night Thursday, expressively enacting the lone opera of a composer who had progressive hearing loss while writing masterpiece after masterpiece. In this “Fidelio,” the singers will stay in the background.“Opera itself as an art form, it has not been accessible to our world,” Kurs, 44, said the other day through a sign-language interpreter. Deaf West, he said, had been approached in the past about collaborating on operas but had always declined.But after nearly two years of not performing because of the pandemic — and after watching an energetic tape of Leonard Bernstein conducting “Fidelio” — Kurs decided to accept this offer to work with the Philharmonic and its music director, Gustavo Dudamel.Indi Robinson and Gregor Lopes, deaf actors, rehearse a scene from Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThe extraordinary nature of the endeavor was clear as singers and actors gathered last week for rehearsals at a United Methodist church in Toluca Lake, in the San Fernando Valley, some 10 miles from Disney Hall. Each day was a mix of languages, movement and simultaneous translations — between voiced German, Spanish and English and signed American Sign Language and Venezuelan Sign Language.For the production, 135 singers, actors, choir members (singing and signing), and orchestra players, along with Dudamel, who will conduct the production, will fill a stage that usually just accommodates an orchestra.“We are creating the dance of the double-cast,” said Alberto Arvelo, the director of the production, in which each character is portrayed by both a singer and an actor. “We have been conceiving ‘Fidelio’ for both audiences — we want to create to create an opera for a deaf audience as well. From the first bar of the opera.”For the actors, who are accustomed to performing in musicals including “Spring Awakening,” which has been part of Deaf West’s repertory, adapting to a more operatic style has been something of an adjustment.“It’s a challenging and terrifying experience,” said Russell Harvard, the actor playing Rocco, the jailer, after rehearsing a scene where he took Leonore to the dungeon to see her husband (husbands: a singer and an actor) sleeping on the floor. “I have never done anything like this before.”Josh Castille, a deaf performance artist acting the role of Florestan, left, worked with the director, Alberto Arvelo, center, and Ian Koziara, the tenor singing the role of Florestan.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThe actors have to translate German (the language of Beethoven’s opera, and one that few of them know, so lip-reading is not an option for most) into American Sign Language. And they have to get used to the florid, multiple repetitions of a single word or line in the score, all of which are second nature for opera singers used to coloratura runs, and find ways to convey, with signs, the big moments when a singer sends a single note soaring through the hall.“Oh gosh — it is stressing me out,” said Amelia Hensley, the actor portraying Leonore, who disguises herself as a man named Fidelio to get a job in the jail where her husband, a political prisoner, is being held, in the hopes of saving him.“I have to hold my sign for an incredibly long time because the note is held that long,” she said. “It’s difficult for me to understand because I don’t hear. And I want to make sure that the deaf audience will understand me and understand why I’m holding this out, because it’s not natural to the language to hold a sign that long.”This production of “Fidelio” is opening less than a month after “CODA” won the Academy Award for best picture, and Troy Kotsur, who used to be member of Deaf West, won the Oscar for best supporting actor, the first deaf man to be so honored by the academy. Deaf West is developing a musical version of “CODA.” (Dudamel and his wife, Maria Valverde, said in an interview they had seen the movie three times.)This production is steeped in classical music history, since Beethoven experienced hearing loss in the last decades of his life. (“Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others,” the composer and musician wrote in 1802 in an anguished letter addressed to his brothers that came to be known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.)María Inmaculada Velásquez Echeverria, the artistic director of White Hands Choir.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThat history intrigued Dudamel as he was arranging a 250th anniversary celebration of Beethoven’s birth just before the pandemic. “It was how to make the opera be part of these two worlds — the two worlds of Beethoven,” he said.And it is what drew Deaf West to this project; its members considered what Beethoven faced writing and conducting while dealing with a steady decline in his hearing.“Maybe he did it through feeling the vibrations of the music?” Kurs said. “I don’t know Beethoven’s exact process, but there’s a similarity to how I experience music. I’ve never heard music in my entire life, but I think that I understand it.”There is much debate among biographers and musicologists about Beethoven’s level of hearing at various points in his career. He wrote and revised “Fidelio” over the course of nearly a decade, from its first performance in 1805 to the substantially revised version of 1814. By 1813, he had several ear trumpets made. By 1818, he began carrying pads of paper for people to write down what they were saying to him. While he was able to continue composing as his hearing deteriorated, it became increasingly difficult for him to perform and conduct.“It never really affected his ability to compose or orchestrate because he was wildly creative throughout his life,” said Theodore J. Albrecht, a retired professor of musicology at Kent State University, who has written extensively about Beethoven.Jan Swafford, a Beethoven biographer, said the composer began reporting hearing loss as early as 1798. “He would not have lost pitch as much as color,” he said of its onset.In the original plan, before the pandemic, this production was to be presented in Europe, with Dudamel conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra along with the White Hands Choir, a group of deaf and hard of hearing performers associated with El Sistema, the music education program in Venezuela where Dudamel trained. After the tour through Europe was canceled, Dudamel revived the idea here in Los Angeles, this time working with his own orchestra and Deaf West, the renowned Los Angeles-based theater.Dudamel is familiar with the complexities of leading an orchestra, singers and a choir; he is also the music director for the Paris Opera. But this week, he will also be leading the deaf and hard-of-hearing actors from Deaf West and choir members from Venezuela.The conductor Gustavo Dudamel, left, worked with members of the opera’s cast and chorus at a recent rehearsal.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesDudamel told Kurs he had to some extent been prepared for this because of his work at the podium, especially as someone who conducts orchestras all over the world, with players who speak many different languages. (Some orchestra players disdain overly verbal conductors in any language, preferring to work through the music.)“In a way, a conductor needs to have sign language conducting the orchestra,” Dudamel told Kurs during a break in a rehearsal. “You cannot say anything. You can only show them.”Valverde, an actress and filmmaker, is producing a documentary about the White Hands Choir, whose members wear distinctive white gloves, and was there filming the choir as her husband led it in rehearsal.The aspirations of this performance will be signaled from first notes of the overture.The Venezuelan choir will use choreography and facial expressions to convey the power of the overture which opens the opera: The other day, it was wide smiles and hands raised to the air in a representation of fireflies. “Fidelio’s overture is especially optimistic,” Arvelo, the director said. “In such a dark story, the overture starts with this moment in major tones. We were like: How can we transmit this with images?”During the spoken stretches of the opera, the audience will hear nothing: the actors will communicate the dialogue in sign language, which will be translated on supertitles cast above the stage.The production will last for three nights.“I think it’s going to be a mixed audience,” said Chad Smith, the head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “There will be a lot of the L.A. Phil audience who are coming to hear Gustavo and the LA Phil perform one of the great works from the canon.”Smith added that the hope was to also have people who are deaf or hard of hearing, who are in the space for “perhaps the first time.”The experience has proved to be as powerful for the opera singers as for the actors. Ryan Speedo Green, the bass-baritone who appeared as Uncle Paul in “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” at the Metropolitan Opera last year, and is the singing counterpart to Russell Harvard’s Rocco, said this was the most inclusive opera he had ever witnessed.“People want to see themselves onstage,” he said. “For once in my life, I’m going to be someone’s voice and they’re going to be my action. He is my body and my action and my intent and my physical interpretation. And I am his voice to the audience, to the hearing audience. We are one entity — Rocco. He is attached to me, as much as I am attached to him.” More

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      in Music

      Britney Spears Says She Is Pregnant in Instagram Post

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      During her successful effort to end her conservatorship, the performer had complained that the team appointed to supervise her had blocked her from having additional children.Months after Britney Spears was released from the conservatorship that she said was restricting her from having a third child, the pop star announced Monday in an Instagram post that she is pregnant.In explosive testimony last year, Ms. Spears called the conservatorship that had governed her life for 13 years “abusive,” saying the people who managed it had refused to let her get her IUD removed so she could try to have another child.“I want to be able to get married and have a baby,” Ms. Spears said last June. “I was told right now in the conservatorship I am not able to get married or have a baby.”The singer’s assertion about her birth control device was among the most stunning in her speech, during which she said she had been drugged and compelled to work against her will. Reproductive rights advocates condemned the situation as a violation of her rights.Ms. Spears’s impassioned testimony, in which she castigated her father and others who managed the legal arrangement overseeing her life and finances, set a process in motion that led to the conservatorship’s termination. In November, a judge in Los Angeles ruled that the arrangement was no longer required, granting Ms. Spears newfound control over her life.Since the singer went public about her opposition to the conservatorship, Ms. Spears, 40, has openly discussed her freedom on her Instagram, announcing her engagement to her longtime boyfriend, Sam Asghari, and continuing to lament the control her family and others exacted over her life for years.In her Instagram post, Ms. Spears joked that Mr. Asghari — whom she now refers to as her husband — suggested that she was “food pregnant” after a trip to Hawaii.“So I got a pregnancy test …,” she wrote, “and uhhhhh well … I am having a baby.”James P. Spears, Ms. Spears’s father, who is known as Jamie, first petitioned the court for authority over his adult daughter’s life and finances in early 2008, citing her very public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse amid a child custody battle. The conservatorship governed Ms. Spears’s career and day-to-day life for nearly 14 years, eventually drawing close scrutiny from fans and outside observers who worried about her well-being and wondered why an active global celebrity needed such an arrangement.Ms. Spears has two teenage sons with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.In her post, Ms. Spears mentioned her struggles with perinatal depression in a previous pregnancy and suggested that women couldn’t discuss the condition openly back then.“Some people considered it dangerous if a woman complained like that with a baby inside her,” she wrote, “but now women talk about it everyday.” More

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      in Television

      Zelensky, Roots in Show Business, Presses for an Oscar Appearance

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      KYIV, Ukraine — He has spoken with two movie stars by video call from the bombarded and encircled city of Kyiv.His aides lobbied the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar night show of support. He rereleased his own television show on Netflix in the middle of the war.President Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor turned wartime leader of Ukraine, has dedicated most of his public appearances to appeals to Western nations for lethal weaponry to fight the Russians: tanks, jets and missiles.But Mr. Zelensky, who before he became president had starred in romantic comedies and performed stand-up routines, has also pressed for celebrities and artists to speak up for his country, in what aides say is a worthwhile effort to solidify Ukraine’s global soft power advantage over Russia.“We live in the modern world, and we know that opinion makers and celebrities are important,” said Ekaterine Zguladze, a former deputy minister of interior now involved in the Ukrainian government’s effort to win support from artists, musicians and celebrities. “Not only politicians shape the world.”Ms. Zguladze added: “Right now, there exists genuine solidarity around the world for Ukraine. And this solidarity is not because of the heartbreaking images of destroyed cities and human tragedy, but because of the values we all share.”But Ukraine’s appeal to the academy, the organization that awards the Oscars, has encountered drama of its own.Before the show, organizers said the war would be noted and the human toll honored, but had not committed to a video appearance by Mr. Zelensky, said Brian Keith Etheridge, a sitcom writer based in Los Angeles. He helped coordinate the Ukrainian government’s outreach to the academy, with help from Mila Kunis, an actress of Ukrainian origin, and her husband, Ashton Kutcher.“The concern that we were told is, they don’t want to overly politicize the show,” Mr. Etheridge said. “If Zelensky just says ‘thank you’ it will remind people, and it could raise millions of dollars. It’s such a giant platform just to have his face show up.”Sean Penn in Rzeszow, Poland, last week after leaving Ukraine, where he had been making a documentary about the Russian invasion.Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSean Penn, who had been filming a documentary in Ukraine when the war broke out, has called for a boycott of the Oscars if Mr. Zelensky is not permitted to appear by video and vowed to smelt his own awards if the academy snubs the Ukrainian leader. The award statues are made of gold-plated bronze.If the Oscar producers do not allow an appearance for “the leadership in Ukraine, who are taking bullets and bombs for us, along with the Ukrainian children that they are trying to protect, then I think every single one of those people, and every bit of that decision, will have been the most obscene moment in all of Hollywood history,” Mr. Penn told CNN in an interview.Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, the producers said they intended to commemorate the war’s toll but did not commit to a video appearance by Mr. Zelensky.“We’re going to be very thoughtful about how we acknowledge where we are in the world,” Will Packer, a producer of the Oscar ceremony, said Thursday at a news conference.Of a possible appearance by Mr. Zelensky, he said: “The show is in the process, so that’s not something that we would definitively say one way or another at this point. As I’ve mentioned before, we want to be fun and celebratory, but we certainly are going to do that in a respectful way.”Preparations at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on Saturday, before the Sunday’s Oscars ceremony.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe comedic actress Wanda Sykes, one of the ceremony’s co-hosts, noted of Mr. Zelensky, “Isn’t he busy right now?”While Mr. Zelensky’s aides have pressed for support during the show in whatever form it takes, seeking any avenue to win public backing in the West, the value of celebrity support in a shooting war is not universally acknowledged in Ukraine.“Ultimately, it’s important what is happening on the ground,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said. “Everybody is doing what they can. I don’t know if one more speech of Zelensky will make a difference. But it’s good those who initiate it want to do it. Everybody wants to help in any way possible.”But Mr. Danylyuk said that “in the end, you need results,” like supplies of fighter jets, tanks or missiles for the Ukrainian Army.Mr. Zelensky has pressed on all fronts to convey to a broad audience, and particularly to countries that are providing weaponry, the moral imperative of supporting Ukraine in the war.Mr. Zelensky addressing Congress by video this month. He has worked to persuade a broad audience of the moral imperative of supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times“In general, Zelensky is really following the news from Hollywood and looking for opportunities for support,” Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to the president’s chief of staff, said in an interview.The push for backing for Ukraine during the Oscars began a week ago, after Mr. Zelensky spoke on a video call from Kyiv with Mr. Kutcher and Ms. Kunis, to thank the couple for raising $35 million for Ukrainian refugees and humanitarian aid in a GoFundMe campaign, Mr. Leshchenko said.Ms. Kunis most recently starred in “Breaking News in Yuba County” and has a planned movie release by Netflix, “Luckiest Girl Alive.”“Ukrainians are proud and brave people who deserve our help in their time of need,” she wrote in the fund-raising appeal. “This unjust attack on Ukraine and humanity at large is devastating and the Ukrainian people need our support.”After the video call, Mr. Zelensky’s aides sought a last-minute slot at the Oscar ceremony.Mr. Zelensky has always had a keen sense of image and storytelling in politics. Earlier this month, he said he was aware that his repeated televised appeals for resistance, and continued presence in the beleaguered capital, had turned him into a symbol of bravery in many countries.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a news conference early this month in Kyiv, the capital.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesThe Oscars are also a natural fit for an appeal by his government for humanitarian assistance, as many of his top aides are also movie industry veterans.The chief of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, was a media lawyer and movie producer. The head of the domestic intelligence agency, Ivan Bakanov, had been the director of the Kvartal 95 studio. A chief presidential adviser, Serhiy Shefir, was a screenwriter and producer whose major credits included a hit romantic comedy film, “Eight First Dates,” and a television series, “The In-laws.”Before becoming president of Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky played a president in his own television series, “Servant of the People,” which was rereleased on Netflix this month. The character, a teacher, is propelled to the presidency after he goes on a tirade against corruption, which is filmed by his students in a video that goes viral.Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Matt Stevens from New York. More