People: Judge refuses to throw out sex assault case against Cosby

A judge refused to throw out the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby on Wednesday, sweeping aside claims that a previous district attorney had granted the comedian immunity from prosecution a decade ago.

Common Pleas Judge Steven O’Neill issued the ruling after a hard-fought two-day hearing.

The case now moves to a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try the 78-year-old Cosby on charges he drugged and violated former Temple University athletic department employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The TV star could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

In 2005, then-District Attorney Bruce Castor decided the case was too flawed to prosecute.

At the hearing this week, Cosby’s lawyers tried to get the case thrown out by putting Castor himself on the stand. Castor testified that in deciding not to charge Cosby, he intended to forever close the door on prosecuting the comedian.

But current District Attorney Kevin Steele questioned whether Castor ever made such an agreement, since it was never put in writing on a legal document and the Cosby attorney with whom Castor dealt is now dead.

“A secret agreement that allows a wealthy defendant to buy his way out of a criminal case isn’t right,” Steele told the judge.

The judge said he struggled to find similar cases where a suspect who was never charged received a promise that he would never be prosecuted. Normally, immunity is granted after a suspect is charged because he or she can provide testimony or information to prosecutors.

Mexican actress seeks injunction in possible drug lord case

Actress Kate del Castillo has filed a petition seeking an injunction against any arrest related to Mexico’s investigation of her relationship with detained drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a court official confirmed Wednesday.

Del Castillo arranged a meeting between the drug boss and actor Sean Penn in October. Guzman was arrested in a raid in January.

Later that month, Mexico’s attorney general said officials were investigating possible money laundering involving Guzman and the actress’ tequila business.

On Wednesday, an official with the federal judiciary council said Del Castillo’s petition was filed at the end of last week, but said a judge told the actress’ lawyers to specify more clearly the grounds on which they were seeking the injunction. The official could not be quoted by name under judicial policy.

Lawyers have five days to answer the court’s request for more information.

Mexican law allows people to file for injunctions against government actions that they think could violate their constitutional rights, even if those actions haven’t occurred.

Del Castillo’s representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment. On Twitter, she wrote recently that many people are making up “items they think will make good stories.”

John Oliver, about to return to HBO, and his secrecy policy

HBO’s John Oliver says he likes the idea of keeping as much as possible about his show a secret until it airs each week, a philosophy he took to the extreme last spring when he traveled to Moscow to interview Edward Snowden.

Oliver, who begins a new round of his “Last Week Tonight” comedy show on Feb. 14, did not tell his network until he had returned that he had spoken to the fugitive, who leaked NSA documents to journalists in 2013 and faces prison time if he returns to the United States.

He pleaded with HBO not to tell anyone he had interviewed Snowden, in part because it would spoil a segment where he makes viewers wonder if Snowden would even show up. He even asked the studio audience at the episode’s taping to keep quiet about it online.

“I really appreciated the fact that HBO would let us do it that way,” Oliver said, “because we thought it was the best way to actually present it, even though commercially it was the worst way you could present it.”

Oliver said HBO has kept its promise not to interfere creatively in the making of “Last Week Tonight.”

“It’s like your parents saying, ‘you can do whatever you’d like, but don’t touch that cabinet,’” he said. “I presumed that HBO was lying” the way other networks often do, he said.

With his philosophy in mind, Oliver was not revealing much Wednesday about the topics “Last Week Tonight” will be covering in the upcoming months.

He will, however, be ending a moratorium about discussion of the presidential campaign. The show wants to look almost forensically at how the process of democracy works, rather than be caught in daily stories about what candidates are saying that he said can be handled better comically elsewhere.

“Otherwise, you get lost in the general campaign ephemera where nothing really significant happens of any consequence,” he said.