More than 18 months after being charged with sexual assault and several attempts at trial delays, Bill Cosby is set to go on trial this week in Philadelphia.
Here鈥檚 what鈥檚 at stake for the disgraced comedian.
WHAT
Cosby is accused of drugging and molesting a woman in 2004, and is facing three charges of aggravated indecent sexual assault.
The charges were laid in December, 2015, after a 14-month period when nearly 60 women came forward to say they had either been sexually assaulted by Cosby or drugged and assaulted by him.
If convicted, the 79-year-old Cosby -- who is now mostly blind and in poor health -- faces a lengthy prison sentence. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. If he鈥檚 convicted of more than one charge, however, he could serve the sentences concurrently.
Cosby has denied all the accusations, saying his encounter with the woman was consensual.
WHO
Cosby鈥檚 accuser is a 44-year-old, Toronto-born basketball official named Andrea Constand. While working at Temple University, she met Cosby and went for dinner and career advice at his suburban estate in January, 2004.
She alleges Cosby offered her wine and pressured her to take pills he said would help calm her. She alleges when she became incapacitated, Cosby assaulted her.
Constand lodged a formal police complaint a year later, but the then-district attorney declined to file charges, saying too much time had elapsed.
For this week鈥檚 trial, the prosecution had tried to call 13 other accusers who said they too were assaulted by Cosby, but Judge Steven O'Neill has granted only one of them leave to testify. The woman doesn鈥檛 want her name published and will be known by the pseudonym "Kacey."
That woman, who worked for one of Cosby's agents in Los Angeles, has a similar story to Constand鈥檚, and it鈥檚 expected prosecutors will use her testimony to suggest Cosby had a pattern of drugging and molesting women.
As for Cosby himself, he told a U.S. radio show that he won鈥檛 be testifying:
"I just don鈥檛 want to sit there and have to figure out what I believe is a truthful answer as to whether or not I鈥檓 opening a can of something that my lawyers are scrambling,鈥� he told the station.
HOW
It鈥檚 expected that testimony Cosby gave in 2006, when Constand sued Cosby for sexual battery, will prove pivotal at this criminal trial.
Though 13 other women signed on to support Constand鈥檚 lawsuit, saying Cosby had also molested them, the lawsuit never went to trial. Instead, Cosby reached a confidential settlement with Constand.
But the transcripts from that case were unsealed in 2015, at the request of The Associated Press.
They revealed that Cosby admitted in his deposition to giving Constand pills the night of their dinner and putting his hand down her pants. However, he said they had a consensual, romantic relationship.
Cosby also admitted to obtaining Quaalude sedatives in order to give them to women he wanted to have sex with, adding though that he gave the pills only to women who wanted them.
The trial could be a difficult one for Constand. In the pretrial phase, Cosby鈥檚 defence team interrogated Constand, seeking to know more about why she waited a full year after her encounter with Cosby to file a police report, and why she had trouble consistently remembering the date of the alleged assault.
WHERE
The trial will take place in Montgomery County, Pa., near Philadelphia, but the jury was drawn from the Pittsburgh area because of concerns it would be hard to find open-minded jurors in the county where Cosby lives.
The trial is expected to last approximately two weeks and jurors will be bused in to the courthouse and sequestered for the duration of the trial.
There will be no cameras in the courtroom, not will any Twitter update be allowed out the courtroom. But more than 100 journalists from around the world have signed up to watch and report on the proceedings.
With files from The Associated Press
