Prosecutors in TV legend Bill Cosby’s upcoming retrial on sexual assault charges told a judge today that they want to call 19 other Cosby accusers in an effort to show a pattern of “prior bad acts” over five decades, the AP reports.

Cosby’s first trial ended in a mistrial in June after the jury was unable to come to a decision.

“In that proceeding, prosecutors asked to call 13 other accusers, but the judge allowed only one to testify, a woman who said she was attacked by Cosby at a Los Angeles hotel in 1996,” the AP reports. “In Thursday’s filing, prosecutors asked the court to reconsider its earlier order, saying the 19 women’s accusations show that Cosby’s prior bad acts are sufficiently ‘distinctive and so nearly identical as to become the signature of the same perpetrator.’”

The report notes: “Pennsylvania law allows testimony about ‘prior bad acts’ if they fit a nearly identical crime pattern.”