#MeToo movement could impact retrial of Bill Cosby

PHILADELPHIA — At Bill Cosby’s first trial, jurors couldn’t agree whether to accept a woman’s story that “America’s Dad” sexually assaulted her over a decade ago. Now he faces a retrial in a vastly different cultural climate, one in which powerful men from Hollywood to the U.S. Senate are being toppled by allegations of sexual misconduct.

The jury in Cosby’s case was deadlocked on charges he drugged and molested a woman in 2004, and the judge declared a mistrial in June. But that was before the revelations about movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement burst into the public sphere.

The shift is clearly on Cosby’s mind.