Cosby Lawyer Vows 'Fight Is Not Over' After Guilty Verdict
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele nodded toward the #MeToo movement after the sexual assault verdict, saying there's now "remarkable awareness of how these crimes have been covered up and papered over" in the past.
April 26, 2018 at 02:04 PM
10 minute read
Bill Cosby was found guilty on Thursday of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, based on Andrea Constand's allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted her more than a decade ago.
Each of the charges carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. The court has yet to set a date for sentencing.
A Montgomery County jury deliberated for 14 hours after 12 days of trial before reaching a verdict early Thursday afternoon. They were the second set of jurors to consider Cosby's fate, after a group brought in from Allegheny County last year was unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial for Cosby last June.
The charges in each trial stemmed from allegations that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted Constand in 2004, when she was an employee at Temple University.
After the verdict was announced, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele argued that Cosby's bail should be revoked. The $1 million bail is not significant enough to ensure Cosby will not flee, but Judge Steven T. O'Neill disagreed, keeping previous bail conditions.
Steele also said Cosby has a plane, and Cosby interjected, yelling, “He doesn't have a plane, you asshole!”
Prosecutors used testimony from Constand and five other women to paint Cosby as a man “nothing like the image he played on TV,” who “utilized that image and cloaked it around himself so he was able to gain the trust and gain the confidence of these young, unsuspecting women,” as Kristen Gibbons Feden argued Tuesday morning.
The defense, meanwhile, accused Constand of being a “pathological liar” who only made allegations against Cosby in an attempt to make money. They pointed to her $3.38 million civil settlement with Cosby in 2006, which defense lawyer Tom Mesereau called “one of the biggest highway robberies of all time.”
But the case came down to memories of events that took place more than a decade ago—the alleged assault, and a conversation between Constand and a co-worker that allegedly took place just a few weeks afterward.
During a press conference after the verdict, Steele thanked Constand and cited the ongoing national conversation surrounding sexual assault.
“She has been a major factor in a movement that has gone in the right direction, finally,” he said. “Now there's remarkable awareness of how these crimes have been covered up and papered over, over the years.”
Mesereau said the verdict was disappointing.
“We don't think Mr. Cosby is guilty of anything,” he said. “The fight is not over.”
|He Said, She Said … and She Said
On the stand, Constand alleged that Cosby had become a mentor to her, then invited her to his home one night early in 2004 and offered her three blue pills “to relax.” After that, Constand said, she became “weak” and started seeing double, so Cosby led her to a couch.
Constand said she passed out on the couch, and was later “jolted awake.” She said Cosby was penetrating her vagina “quite forcefully,” touched her breast and placed her hand on his penis.
“I wanted it to stop. I couldn't say anything,” Constand said. “I was trying to get my hands to move, my legs to move, and the message just wasn't getting there. I was weak.”
Constand told police about the alleged assault a year afterward. Prosecutors declined to bring charges against Cosby at that time, but reopened the case in 2015.
When Cosby was deposed for the civil case in 2005 and 2006, he described the encounter as consensual, but multiple elements of his and Constand's accounts were the same. He said it was digital penetration, that they were on a couch in his living room and he even admitted to giving her pills, which he said were Benadryl.
While Cosby did not testify at his criminal trial, jurors were presented with portions of his civil deposition, which they asked to rehear during deliberations.
They also asked to rehear testimony from Marguerite Jackson, the defense team's star witness.
Jackson is a longtime academic adviser at Temple University, who said she traveled with the women's basketball team on several occasions and roomed with Constand. Constand, however, said she never had a roommate on those work trips.
During a 2004 trip when they roomed together, Jackson testified, Constand told Jackson that she had been sexually assaulted by a high-profile person. When Jackson pressed her on the issue Constand backtracked, Jackson said.
“She said, 'No, no it didn't. But I could say it did. I could quit my job, go back to school and start a business,'” Jackson testified.
At Cosby's first trial, his lawyers tried to have Jackson admitted as a witness, but their motion was denied. O'Neill allowed it at retrial.
|'Prior Bad Acts'
For the retrial, prosecutors were also allowed to call witnesses that were not admitted before—five other women who have accused Cosby of drugging and sexual assaulting them in the 1980s. They were allowed to testify under Rule of Criminal Procedure 404(b), which allows evidence of a defendant's prior bad acts.
Gloria Allred, who represents three of the five prior bad acts witnesses, said following the verdict that she had never been so happy about a court decision in 42 years.
“Finally we can say women are believed, and not only on #MeToo, but in a court of law,” Allred said outside the courthouse.
The women came from various backgrounds, including an aspiring actress, a bartender and celebrity model Janice Dickinson.
Each of the five gave an account of alleged assault with some similarity to Constand's. All five said they had met with Cosby and took a pill or an alcoholic drink he offered. And they all said they became unconscious sometime afterward.
“I was rendered motionless, immobile,” Dickinson said, and then Cosby climbed on top of her. “I didn't consent to this. I hadn't said yes.”
Some of the women recalled specific sexual contact, and one, Lise-Lotte Lublin, said she has no memory of sexual contact, but woke up at home what felt like two days later. Years after, when other women were making allegations about Cosby, she said she “realized something else had happened.”
Before the accusers testified, prosecutors called up Barbara Ziv, a forensic psychologist, to answer questions about how sexual assault impacts victims. She said victims of acquaintance rape often make contact with the perpetrator after an assault, and victims often blame themselves at least in part.
“That's the norm. Women take responsibility,” Ziv said. “I don't know that I can name one victim of sexual assault who is not humiliated by the fact that they have been sexually assaulted, who does not blame themselves in some way.”
Cosby's lawyers attacked the prosecution's use of other accusers' testimony, and doubted the women's testimony in their closing arguments.
“They're back and they're bringing in five accusers because their case can't stand on the merits when you look just at Andrea Constand,” defense lawyer Kathleen Bliss said.
She also questioned Ziv's expert testimony, calling her theories “myth,” in an apparent attempt to appeal to the women on the jury.
“We are not snowflakes. We're not delicate flowers,” she said. “As women, we don't abandon facts or science, or truth.”
In her own closing, Feden said Bliss' argument was “utterly shameful.”
“She's the exact reason why women and victims … of sexual assault don't report these crimes,” Feden said.
|New Evidence of an Old Settlement
Constand and Cosby's $3.38 million civil settlement was another new element in the retrial. The settlement terms were not brought into the first trial.
The defense argued that Constand only made her allegations against Cosby to get that money, calling her a “con artist” in opening arguments.
But prosecutors attempted to undermine that argument early in the trial, noting in opening arguments the difference between a civil lawsuit and a criminal case.
“The evidence in this case will show that Andrea Constand didn't come to us,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said. “What happened is after this gets released, we go to her and ask whether she's willing to cooperate with the commonwealth, which brings us here today.”
During her testimony, Constand was asked why she agreed to stay quiet, but she didn't mention the money.
“It was a very painstaking process for me and my family. It tore my family apart, and we just wanted it over,” Constand said.
Later, when her mother, Gianna Constand, was testifying, Cosby's lawyer, Bliss, suggested that she benefited from her daughter's settlement.
“I don't even know how much my daughter got,” Gianna Constand said. “This isn't about money Miss Bliss.”
Steele said Cosby's power and public image were major factors in the case from the start, including when it was reopened in 2015. Steele noted that evidence from Cosby's civil case became public following a federal court decision in which U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said Cosby's image as a “public moralist” was in stark contrast with the conduct described in previously sealed court documents.
Steele also noted it's not the first case in which he's taken on a public figure since he was elected in 2015, referring to former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who was convicted in 2016 of perjury and related charges.
“I hope if there's anything that comes from this, it's that you can move forward in these cases,” Steele said. “I've now had two juries stand up against the powerful and say 'guilty' on every single count that has been alleged against them.”
|The Jury
After closing arguments in the first trial in June 2017, a 12-person jury from Allegheny County deliberated for 52 hours. On a Saturday morning, a day before Father's Day, they reported for a second time that they were unable to reach a consensus about America's dad, and a mistrial was declared.
The 2018 retrial jury was not bused in from the Pittsburgh area, but came from Cosby's home county. Still, they were sequestered during the 14 days of trial and deliberations.
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