Bill Cosby’s lurid testimony from ’05 is read to the jury
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The jury at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial heard from the comedian without him actually taking the stand Thursday as prosecutors read into the record his lurid, decade-old testimony about giving pills to Andrea Constand and then reaching into her pants.
Jurors sat riveted and took notes as they heard the TV star’s words saying that as he touched her body at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004, “I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything. And so I continue and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection.”
“I am not stopped,” he said. Cosby testified as part of a lawsuit brought against him by Constand in 2005. It was settled under confidential terms. The comedian’s lawyers had fought to keep jurors from hearing the testimony, but a judge ruled prosecutors could introduce it.
A portion of the deposition was read by a detective Thursday afternoon, with more expected to come today, including Cosby talking about giving quaaludes and alcohol to women he wanted to have sex with.
Cosby, 79, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of drugging and molesting Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s women’s basketball program. He has said the 2004 sexual encounter was consensual.
Constand, 44, testified this week that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers against her will after giving her pills that left her so limp she was unable to push him away or tell him to stop.
She denied they had a romantic relationship and said she had rebuffed his previous sexual advances.
Cosby said in a recent interview he did not intend to testify at his trial.
In the deposition, Cosby said he gave her three half-tablets of Benadryl before initiating a consensual “petting” session.
In 2015, a judge unsealed portions of the deposition in response to a request from The Associated Press. That immediately spurred Pennsylvania prosecutors to reopen their Cosby investigation and unleashed a barrage of similar allegations from dozens of other women that all but destroyed Cosby’s nice-guy image as America’s Dad.
Earlier Thursday, a detective testified the district attorney who decided more than a decade ago not to bring charges against Cosby shut the investigation down while police were still working the case.
District Attorney Bruce Castor abruptly closed the probe in 2005 hours after police met to review their next steps, Cheltenham police Sgt. Richard Schaffer told jurors in testimony that could blunt efforts by Cosby’s lawyers to argue Castor, long out of office, saw no case.
Castor is on the list of potential witnesses at the trial.
“We had been discussing investigative leads and where they were going,” Schaffer, a witness for the prosecution, said on Day 4 of Cosby’s trial.
Cosby acknowledged in a 2005 police interview he fondled Constand after giving her what he said were cold-and-allergy pills to help her relax, according to a statement also introduced in court on Thursday. But he said they had a romantic relationship and that she did not object to his advances.
Castor ended the investigation after four weeks, announcing Cosby would not be charged because the evidence had shown both parties “could be held in less than a flattering light.” He said he was concerned Constand had stayed in touch with Cosby and waited a year to call police.
It was new set of prosecutors that brought charges against Cosby in 2015.
Cosby’s lawyers have argued all along the charges should never have been brought because of Castor’s initial decision not to prosecute the TV star.
Some 60 women have come forward to say Cosby sexually violated them, but the statute of limitations for prosecution had run out in nearly every case. Constand’s case is the only one in which Cosby has been charged.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.