COSBY TO DA ON FLEEING: I DON’T ‘HAVE A PRIVATE PLANE, YOU (BLEEP)!’
DA: Ruling reveals ‘the real Bill Cosby’
Bill Cosby’s conviction yesterday of drugging and molesting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia mansion clears the way for a federal civil trial in Springfield involving seven women who say Cosby sexually assaulted them over several decades and called them liars.
An attorney for the women, Joseph Cammarata, hailed yesterday’s verdict as a “powerful rebuke of Cosby’s claim to innocence.
“A jury of his peers has spoken and found that he abused Andrea Constand,” Cammarata said. “It’s the right result. It shows that regardless of a person’s power and position, we are all equal before the law.”
His clients, Tamara Green and six other women, have accused Cosby of sexual assault but sued him for defamation, claiming that his public denials have unfairly portrayed them as liars.
Cosby has returned fire, countersuing for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, accusing the women of making “malicious, opportunistic, and false and defamatory accusations of sexual misconduct,” according to court documents.
Last June, a Pennsylvania jury failed to reach a verdict on criminal charges that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted Constand in 2004, forcing a mistrial.
Yesterday, a jury of seven men and five women who had deliberated 14 hours over two days returned a guilty verdict after a twoweek retrial in which prosecutors had more weapons
at their disposal than they did the first time: They were allowed to put five other women on the stand who testified that Cosby, married for 54 years, had drugged and violated them, too.
After the verdict, District Attorney Kevin Steele became teary-eyed as he commended Constand for her courage in coming forward. As she stood silently behind him, Steele apologized to her for a previous DA’s decision in 2005 not to charge Cosby and said the former TV star and comedian “was a man who had evaded this moment for far too long.”
“He used his celebrity, he used his wealth, he used his network of supporters to help him conceal his crimes,” the district attorney said. “Now, we really know today who was really behind that act, who the real Bill Cosby was.”
As the verdict was read, Cosby, 80, stared straight ahead but moments later lashed out at Steele after the prosecutor demanded Cosby be sent immediately to jail because he has an airplane and might flee.
Cosby angrily denied he has a plane, shouting an expletive at Steele and saying, “I’m sick of him!”
The judge decided Cosby can remain free on $1 million bail while he awaits sentencing but restricted him to Montgomery County, where he has a home. Cosby could get up to 10 years in prison for each of the three counts of aggravated indecent assault. He is likely to get less than that under sentencing guidelines, but given his age, even a modest term could mean he will die behind bars.
Constand, 45, a former Temple women’s basketball administrator, told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends” and then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized, unable to resist or say no. Cosby claimed the encounter was consensual and said he gave her 1 1⁄2 pills of the cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to help her relax.