Cosby jury to hear testimony that his accuser was scheming
Details of settlement in ’06, 5 other accusers’ accounts to be heard
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — In a major victory for Bill Cosby, the judge in his sexual assault trial ruled Tuesday to admit testimony from a Temple University academic adviser who says that Cosby’s central accuser, Andrea Constand, told her she could make money by falsely claiming that she had been molested by a prominent person.
Judge Steven T. O’Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas had barred the testimony of the administrator, Marguerite Jackson, 56, an adviser in Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, during Cosby’s first trial, which ended with a hung jury last summer.
That ruling came after Constand, a former staff member for the Temple women’s basketball program, testified in the first trial that she did not know Jackson. But in recent weeks, Cosby’s defense had brought forward additional evidence that the two women had some contact.
Constand’s credibility is expected to be a prime focus of the defense, as it was at the first trial, during which she testified at length that Cosby had drugged and then assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.
Cosby, 80, and among the bestknown graduates of Temple, faces three charges of aggravated indecent assault of Constand. He has said the sexual contact was consensual.
Prosecutors say Constand is just one in a line of women whom Cosby assaulted after giving them some kind of intoxicant. Dozens of women have come forward in recent years with such accounts, and O’Neill agreed last month to allow five of them to testify. Prosecutors say the testimony will buttress their contention that the encounter with Constand was part of a pattern of predatory behavior by Cosby.
At the first trial, only one other woman was allowed to testify alongside Constand.
In another ruling Tuesday, O’Neill said jurors would be able to hear about the lawsuit settlement reached between Constand and Cosby in 2006 in which Cosby paid her a financial sum related to her complaint of sexual assault. The payment amount has been kept confidential for more than a decade but can now be revealed at trial.
Representatives for Cosby and for Kevin R. Steele, the Montgomery County district attorney, had no comment on the rulings, which came on the second day of jury selection for the trial, scheduled to start next week.
O’Neill said his decision about Jackson was “subject to further rulings by this court in the context of trial, specifically, following the testimony of Andrea Constand” — suggesting the decision could be reversed depending on Constand’s testimony.
In an affidavit filed with the court, Jackson, who has worked for more than 30 years at Temple, said she traveled with the women’s college basketball team as an adviser and sometimes shared a room with Constand in the early 2000s. At the time, Constand was the team’s operations manager. Jackson said on a trip to Rhode Island during that time they watched a TV news report together about a prominent person who had drugged and sexually assaulted women.
Constand responded to the TV report, Jackson said, by saying at first that something similar had happened to her. Then she said she had not actually been assaulted but that she could make a lot of money if she told the authorities that she had been, according to the affidavit.
“I could say it happened, file charges and get money to go to school and open a business,” Constand said, according to Jackson’s account.
When she saw the news about Constand and the current criminal charges against Cosby, Jackson said in her affidavit, “I felt Ms. Constand was setting up a celebrity just as she told me she was going to do.”
Kristen Feden, a lawyer for the prosecution, had said Jackson’s testimony should not be admitted because it does not mention Cosby or specify a time when the statement was made.