Bill Cosby Found Guilty of Sexual Assault in Retrial
Bill Cosby on Thursday after he was found guilty in his sexual assault retrial in Norristown, Pa. Credit; Mark Makela/Getty Images
The verdict, in the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era, sealed the spectacular late-in-life downfall of an entertainer who broke racial barriers in Hollywood on his way to TV superstardom as sweater-wearing, wisdom-dispensing Dr Cliff Huxtable.
It was the only criminal case to arise from a barrage of allegations from more than 60 women who said Cosby drugged and molested them over five decades but whose stories were often disbelieved or ignored years before #MeToo put a spotlight on sexual misconduct by powerful men.
The jury of seven men and five women deliberated 14 hours over two days before convicting Cosby of violating Constand in 2004.
Constand, a 45-year-old Temple University women's basketball administrator, said Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called "your friends'' and then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilised, unable to resist or say no. Cosby claimed the encounter was consensual, saying he gave her the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to relax.
Cosby stared straight ahead as the verdict was read but moments later lashed out loudly at District Attorney Kevin Steele after the prosecutor demanded Cosby be sent immediately to jail. Steele told the judge Cosby has an airplane and might flee.
Cosby angrily denied he has a plane and called Steele an "a..hole,'' shouting, "I'm sick of him!''
Judge Steven O'Neill decided Cosby can remain free on US$1 million bail while he awaits sentencing but restricted him to Montgomery County, where his home is. No sentencing date was set.
Cosby waved to the crowd outside the courthouse, got into an SUV and left without saying anything. His lawyer Tom Mesereau declared "the fight is not over'' and said he will appeal.
'JUSTICE HAS BEEN DONE'
Shrieks erupted in the courtroom when the verdict was announced, and some of Cosby's accusers whimpered and cried. Constand remained stoic, then hugged her lawyer and members of the prosecution team.
The verdict came after a two-week retrial in which prosecutors had more courtroom weapons at their disposal than they did the first time: They put on the stand five other women who testified that Cosby, married for 54 years, drugged and violated them, too.
At Cosby's first trial, which ended in a deadlocked jury less than a year ago, only one additional accuser was allowed to testify.
"Justice has been done!'' celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who represented some of Cosby's accusers, said on the courthouse steps. "We are so happy that finally we can say women are believed.''
The district attorney became teary-eyed as he commended Constand for what he said was courage in coming forward. As Constand stood silently behind him, Steele apologised to her for a previous DA's decision in 2005 not to charge Cosby.
Cosby "was a man who had evaded this moment for far too long", Steele said. "He used his celebrity, he used his wealth, he used his network of supporters to help him conceal his crimes.''
He added: "Now, we really know today who was really behind that act, who the real Bill Cosby was.''
IMMEDIATE FALLOUT
Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each carrying a standard sentence of five to 10 years in prison. The counts are likely to be merged for sentencing purposes, but given Cosby's age even a modest term could mean he will die behind bars.
The fallout from the verdict was immediate: Bounce, a TV network that caters to black viewers, announced it would drop reruns of The Cosby Show. And Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, revoked an honorary degree awarded in 2007.
Since Cosby's first trial, the #MeToo movement has taken down powerful men in rapid succession, among them Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey and US Senator Al Franken. During closing arguments, Cosby's lawyers slammed #MeToo, calling Cosby its victim and likening it to a witch hunt or a lynching.
Cosby's new defense team, led by Mesereau, the celebrity attorney who won an acquittal for Michael Jackson on child-molestation charges, launched a ferocious attack on Constand during the trial, calling her a "con artist'' and "pathological liar'' who framed Cosby to get rich.
The star witness for the defense was Marguerite Jackson, a Temple employee who testified that Constand once spoke of setting up a prominent person and suing.
Constand sued Cosby after prosecutors initially declined to file charges, settling with him for nearly US$3.4 million more than a decade ago.
Cosby's defense team derided the other accusers as home-wreckers and suggested they made up their stories in a bid for money and fame.
But Cosby had long ago confirmed some of the rumours about drugs and extramarital sex. In a deposition he gave more than a decade ago as part of Constand's lawsuit, he acknowledged he had obtained quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with.
Source; https://www.stuff.co.nz
Andrea Constand, center, after Bill Cosby’s conviction. (Photo: Getty Images)
Bill Cosby's prevailing accuser, Andrea Constand, is a lesbian. Here's why that matters:-
Although more than 50 women have come forward with their own Bill Cosby sexual assault accounts over the years, the entertainer’s three-count conviction on Thursday came down to just one: that of Andrea Constand, who, the Pennsylvania jury found, had been drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby in his home 14 years ago.
“United we stand,” tweeted Constand not long after the decision was handed down at the Montgomery County Courthouse, along with a photo of herself going in for a celebratory hug.
The pressure on Constand was fierce, as hers was the only criminal case against Cosby; in many of the other women’s cases, the statute of limitations’ time frame had ended. “She is the linchpin of the case,” Lynne M. Abraham, a former Philadelphia district attorney and judge, had said in 2017. “The whole case stands or falls on her. She is it.” Still, Constand remained steadfast in her legal fight.
On Thursday, the day the verdict was read, many observers made a point of highlighting what turned out to be a noteworthy personal fact about Constand in the case: her sexuality.
“Before the national reckoning around sexual harassment and abuse that prompted the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, Andrea Constand … came out publicly in 2015 as a lesbian to challenge her attacker’s assertion that he knew how to read the desires of the women he assaulted,” noted national LGBT publication the Advocate in its story published Thursday about “the lesbian accuser who brought down Bill Cosby.”
The story explained that in 2015, Constand’s attorneys noted, in a motion, “As defendant [Cosby] admits in his deposition, despite his talent for interpreting female reactions to him, he did not realize Plaintiff was gay until the police told him.”
Further, in 2017, the New York Times reported that Constand had told investigators about previous times that Cosby had made sexual advances toward her. “I was kind of embarrassed really,” she’d said, noting that she was gay and that the feelings were not mutual. “I never really thought he would have hit on me. He is much older than my father.”
Echoing recent connections between gayness and activism, as made by Parkland shooting survivors including Emma Gonzalez, some of Constand’s supporters celebrated her sexuality on Thursday — which just happened to be, to their great delight, Lesbian Visibility Day.
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