Cosby case heads to the jury
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The jury in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial was poised to begin deliberating after prosecutors yesterday portrayed the 80-year-old former TV star as a serial predator who drugged and molested a woman 14 years ago.
The defense called Cosby’s accuser a “pathological liar” who was seeking a big payday.
The first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era pit Cosby, the beloved comedian whose career and good-guy reputation were destroyed by a barrage of allegations involving drugs and sex, against a former Temple University women’s basketball administrator who testified that he gave her pills and violated her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion.
Five other women got on the witness stand and testified the same thing had happened to them.
“He is nothing like the image that he played on TV,” prosecutor Kristen Feden told jurors in her closing argument. “In fact, he utilized that image and cloaked it around himself so that he could gain the trust, gain the confidences of these aspiring, unsuspecting women.”
The defense urged jurors to acquit, saying the charges were based on “flimsy, silly, ridiculous evidence.”
Cosby faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each carrying up to 10 years in prison. The jury at Cosby’s first trial deliberated for more than 52 hours over six days last year without reaching a verdict.
Defense attorneys Tom Mesereau and Kathleen Bliss said in their closing argument that chief accuser Andrea Constand consented to sexual activity, then leveled false accusations against the “Cosby Show” star so she could sue him and extract a big settlement.
“You’re dealing with a pathological liar, members of the jury,” said Mesereau, who won an acquittal in Michael Jackson’s 2005 child-molestation case. “You are.”
Cosby’s wife of 54 years looked on from the gallery as his lawyers pleaded with the jury to clear him, the first time she has attended the trial. Camille Cosby, 74, had stayed away as the prosecution built its case that her husband maintained a sordid double life, plying women with drugs and preying on them sexually.
Before the jury came in, she went to the defense table and put her arm around Cosby, who is legally blind. They embraced, smiled and chatted, and he gave her a peck on the cheek.