Cosby defense rests; closing to start today
Entertainer doesn’t take the witness stand in his own behalf
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby’s defense rested its case Monday after calling 10 witnesses over four days to suggest that Andrea Constand fabricated her sex assault allegations to get Cosby’s money and that the entertainer was not even at his Cheltenham home around the time she said he drugged and attacked her there.
The 80-year-old entertainer chose not to take the witness stand in his own behalf, paving the way for lawyers on both sides to deliver closing arguments Tuesday. The jury of seven men and five women, who have been sequestered since the trial in Norristown began, could get the case before the day ends.
Cosby’s retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault has been longer than his first, which went to the jury after six days of testimony and ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial.
This time, prosecutors were permitted to call five additional accusers, who testified over three days that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them in the 1980s. Defense witnesses included a Temple University employee who said Constand had spoken about a plan to fabricate sex assault claims against a celebrity to make money. Most of the other defense witnesses testified briefly about working for Cosby or meeting Constand through him.
As testimony wound down Monday, Cosby’s lawyers announced he would not testify. When Judge Steven T. O’Neill asked the defendant if he agreed with that decision, Cosby loudly replied: “Yes, your honor.”
Earlier, his lawyers had sought to bolster their claim that Cosby couldn’t have been home at the time Constand says the assault occurred in early 2004.
Roslyn Yarbrough, a former executive assistant for Cosby’s agent, told jurors that the entertainer was “very rarely, seldomly” at his Cheltenham home. Yarbrough also said she spoke to Cosby by phone daily and prepared detailed itineraries for his trips during the decade that she worked for the William Morris Agency.
She described pages of itineraries for January 2004, including flight schedules, logs of payments Cosby received for his shows — with the amount of money he made redacted. The records didn’t show trips to Philadelphia that month.
Cosby’s lawyers had a reason to focus on dates: Pennsylvania criminal law requires sex assaults be charged within 12 years of the crime.
Cosby was arrested at the end of 2015, so if Constand’s alleged assault occurred sometime before Dec. 30, 2003, the charges would fall beyond the statute of limitations.