Guilty as charged
In 2004, Andrea Constand, who worked for a university basketball team, visited Bill Cosby’s home to ask for career advice. He gave her pills to reduce her anxiety, which she took, and when she regained consciousness, she said, he was sexually assaulting her. Constand went to the police in 2005 after prolonged trauma following the incident. The prosecutors refused to file charges against Cosby. She sued him in civil court and in 2006 Cosby paid her a settlement figure of $3.38-million without admitting that he assaulted her. He did, however, say that he had previously given sedative drugs to women he planned to seduce.
The incident was kept quiet, but in 2014 another woman accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1979. This opened the floodgates: more than 50 women came forward with similar stories. In 2015, prosecutors agreed to reopen Constand’s case and she filed a criminal charge against Cosby for the 2004 incident. A preliminary hearing was held in 2016 in which it was decreed that there was enough evidence to try Cosby for sexual assault. The trial, held in 2017, ended in a hung jury and a mistrial.
The retrial was held this month. Constand was backed up by five more women who testified how Cosby had assaulted them in a similar fashion. After two weeks of testimony and cross-examination, on Thursday the jury found Cosby guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault.
When the prosecution requested bail to be revoked because Cosby might flee in his private plane, Cosby responded: “He doesn’t have a plane, you asshole!”
Cosby’s legal team announced that they plan to appeal.