Thread: Judge rules Bill Cosby must stand trial on sexual assault charges

Judge rules Bill Cosby must stand trial on sexual assault charges

Judge rejects defense team’s requests to dismiss charges and to order a new preliminary hearing over alleged 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand

Andrea Constand’s claims of sexual assault are the only accusations against Bill Cosby to result in criminal charges. Photograph: ddp USA/Rex/Shutterstock
Molly Redden in Norristown, Pennsylvania

@mtredden


Thursday 7 July 2016 16.54 EDT

A judge has rejected a last-ditch effort by attorneys for Bill Cosby to prevent the actor and comedian from facing trial on charges that he drugged and sexually assaulted a Temple University employee.
In a packed Montgomery County courtroom before Judge Steven O’Neill, Cosby’s defense team on Thursday called for the judge to dismiss the charges on the basis that his accuser did not testify at a May hearing to determine if there was enough evidence for a trial.

Alternatively, attorneys asked O’Neill to order a new preliminary hearing where they could cross-examine Cosby’s accuser.

O’Neill rejected both requests, paving the way for one of the most high-profile trials of the decade to begin as early as this summer. “This case shall proceed to trial,” said O’Neill, who will be the judge in Cosby’s trial.

Cosby is charged with sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who considered Cosby to be a mentor, at his Pennsylvania home in 2004. (Cosby holds an honorary degree from Temple.)

She was one of the first women to accuse Cosby of sexual abuse, long before the public accusations numbered in the dozens. Cosby is fighting numerous civil cases based on those claims. But so far, Constand’s are the only accusations against the television star to result in criminal charges.

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Cosby, who is 78, sat at the defense table with his eyes fixed on Christopher Tayback, one of his attorneys. He entered court using a cane and leaning on the arm of an aide.

Constand, who now resides in Toronto, was not present for Thursday’s hearing. Prosecutors have vowed that she will testify at trial, potentially alongside some of Cosby’s other accusers.

After a long legal battle, Montgomery County prosecutors were thought to have cleared the final obstacle in the way of bringing the comedian to trial when they prevailed in the 24 May hearing.

But Thursday’s appearance by Cosby and his lawyers presented a new challenge.
At issue was the fact that Constand did not testify before Judge Elizabeth McHugh ruled that prosecutors had enough evidence to go to trial. McHugh held that the standard of evidence at a preliminary hearing allowed prosecutors to present the basics of their case without Constand testifying or facing cross-examination.

Instead, at the May evidentiary hearing, prosecutors offered hearsay; three detectives who interviewed Constand and Cosby in 2005 read lengthy portions of transcripts and Constand’s official statement.

Under a higher court ruling, Pennsylvania currently permits hearsay to take the place of victim testimony at a preliminary hearing. But the issue is up for review by the state supreme court, opening the door for Thursday’s challenge.

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“I am not persuaded that it is the role of this court to go in direct contravention of our superior court,” Judge O’Neill said.

“The commonwealth does not have to present live witnesses,” and it has made their case for going to trial.

Prosecutors argued that Thursday’s hearing was another stalling tactic.

“These folks are trying not to get to trial,” said Kevin Steele, the district attorney, on Thursday. “When they want to confront the witness, they can confront her at trial.”

It was his prerogative, Steele said, to shield alleged sex crime victims from harsh cross-examination before trial. “It’s our position that we’re not going to re-traumatize victims,” Steele said.

The road to prosecuting Cosby has been fraught. In 2005, the Montgomery County district attorney declined to prosecute.

Constand’s accusations faded from the public mind after she and Cosby settled her civil suit in 2006.

Then the contents of Cosby’s depositions became public. Steele announced charges just before he was barred by a 12-year statute of limitations. The charges of aggravated indecent assault carry up to 10 years in prison.

Immediately, Cosby’s attorneys fought before O’Neill to dismiss the case on the basis that a former prosecutor vowed not to bring charges if Cosby testified in Constand’s civil case. O’Neill rejected those arguments in February. On Thursday, lawyers for Cosby indicated that they would once again challenge the use of Cosby’s civil suit deposition in a criminal trial.

Cosby maintains that any sexual contact he has had with his accusers – including encounters he acknowledges having with Constand – was consensual.

“Today someone who has given so much to so many had his constitutional rights trampled upon,” said Brian McGonagle, Cosby’s lead defense lawyer, after the ruling.

The May hearing gave prosecutors a chance to showcase some of their evidence against Cosby. In a transcript of Constand’s January 2005 interview with police, Constand claimed that Cosby invited her to his home for a conversation about her future. Over her protestations, he urged her to drink wine and take pills that immobilized her, made it impossible for her to speak, and made her legs feel “like jelly”. Cosby laid her out on the couch, Constand claimed, where he put his hand in her pants and touched her genitals, and fondled her breasts.

“I told him, ‘I can’t even talk’ … I started to panic,” Constand told police in 2005.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-pennsylvania

Bill Cosby found guilty of sexual assault in retrial

Cosby, 80, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of up to $25,000 on each count.
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Adam Reiss and Daniella Silva / Apr.26.2018 / 10:50 AM ET / Updated 11:17 AM ET

Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault trial led by his spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, right, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.Corey Perrine / Pool via Getty Images

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby, who once embodied the idealized American father on a wildly popular sitcom, was convicted of sexual assault on Thursday in a high-stakes retrial after a half-dozen women testified that the famed comedian drugged and assaulted them.

The jury found Cosby guilty on all three counts of Thursday afternoon, drawing an emotional reaction from his accusers. Cosby remains free on bail until sentencing.
Thursday afternoon after a second day of deliberations in which the judge read back testimony of the defense's star witness, who testified that Cosby’s main accuser once said she could frame a “high-profile person.”

The jury was also read back Cosby's deposition testimony from 2005, where the comedian admitted to giving a woman Quaaludes in order to have sex with her.
Cosby, who has faced dozens of sexual misconduct allegations spanning decades, was charged with three counts aggravated indecent assault against one woman, Andrea Constand, 45, who claimed that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in his home in January 2004.

Cosby's first trial ended in a mistrial in June.

Cosby, 80, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of up to $25,000 on each count.

The verdict was a victory for the #MeToo movement, which has exposed sexual harassment and misconduct in entertainment, media, politics and beyond.

Actor and comedian Bill Cosby arrives for deliberations at his sexual assault retrial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania on April 26.Brendan McDermid / ReutersCosby, who has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him, has said the sexual encounter with Constand was consensual.
A few hours after deliberations began Wednesday, the jury returned to the courtroom to ask, "What is the legal definition of consent?"
But O'Neill said that he couldn't give jurors a legal definition, telling them that was something they would have to answer on their own, using their own "common sense."
The verdict marked a dramatic culmination of an 18-year case that spanned two criminal trials and multiple police investigations.

Assistant Montgomery County District Attorney Kristen Feden portrayed Cosby as a sexual predator who used his TV image as a man of wholesome values to target women he believed he could silence.
Prosecutors called five other women who alleged that Cosby also sexually assaulted them in a manner similar to the way he assaulted Constand.
"He preyed on Andrea Constand the same way he preyed on all those five women," Feden said.
Last month, O'Neill ruled that the additional accusers could testify so the prosecution could try to establish that the assault on Constand fit a pattern or that Cosby didn't make a mistake when he drugged and sexually assaulted Constand.
Attorneys for Cosby asked pointed questions about the accusers' history of drug abuse, criminal backgrounds, personal relationships and sex lives.
Defense attorneys were especially hard on Janice Dickinson, a former supermodel.

Cosby's lead attorney, Tom Mesereau, asked Dickinson whether she had spread false rumors about being pregnant with Sylvester Stallone's child. She said the remark was an honest mistake.
"I had sex with two men that month. He wasn't the only contender," she said, garnering smiles from the jury.
Defense attorney Kathleen Bliss described Dickinson in closing arguments as a "failed starlet" and "an aged-out model."
"It sounds like she has slept with every single guy on the planet," Bliss said. "Is Ms. Dickinson really the moral beacon that women's movements want?"
The defense also suggested that Constand and the other accusers were making false accusations in the hope of gaining fame or fortune.
They repeatedly pointed to nearly a $3.4 million payout that Constand received in 2006, the result of a civil settlement with Cosby. And they highlighted lawyer Gloria Allred's proposal in 2014 to set aside a $100 million fund for victims of Cosby if he was unwilling to waive the statute of limitations to allow his accusers to confront him in court.
Allred and her daughter, Lisa Bloom, who is also a lawyer, represent four of the five additional accusers who were allowed to testify.
Some of the questions and arguments drew scorn from observers in the courtroom.
Lili Bernard, another Cosby accuser who sat in the courtroom for much of the trial, called the defense's closing argument highly offensive.
"It was based solely on rape myths, on victim blaming, on victim shaming and on a character assassination of really credible witnesses, of very righteous victims, of victims that were clearly telling the truth," Bernard told reporters as the jury deliberated Wednesday.
"It was just a display of utter misogyny and buffoonery, and you know, I'm just like wow, how low can they go?" she said.
Feden also sharply criticized Bliss over what she called "character assassination" of the accusers.
"That character assassination that Ms. Bliss put those women through was utterly shameful," she said. "She's the exact reason why women, victims of sexual assault and men don't report these crimes."


The #MeToo movement was a cloud over the defense's closing arguments Tuesday, with Bliss telling jurors that they shouldn't allow it to influence their decision.
"Don't get me wrong — bad things definitely happen. But, ladies and gentleman, not every accusation is true. Your common sense tells you that," Bliss said. "We do have to deal with sexual assault. It's a worldwide problem, just like we do with sexual harassment, pay disparity, social inequality.
"But questioning an accuser is not shaming them," she added.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bi...etrial-n869121