Immig crooks get lawyer aid
MAYOR DE BLASIO won’t veto budget language requiring taxpayer cash for immigrant lawyers to include those convicted of serious crimes, he said Tuesday.
“No,” de Blasio said simply when asked if he would jettison the rule, inserted into the city budget at the last minute by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Mark-Viverito says all immigrants facing deportation should have access to the $26 million for legal services, while de Blasio says those convicted of 170 serious felonies should not benefit from the city-funded help.
The budget passed by the Council this week mandated that eligibility for the money be determined solely based on income, not on convictions.
De Blasio would not say whether he planned to defy the Council, saying there’s room to resolve the dispute “in the contracting process.” BILL COSBY was confronted in court Thursday with his own lurid descriptions of “petting,” penetration and the alleged orgasm his accuser Andrea Constand had after he admittedly gave her Benadryl pills.
His oddly graphic prior testimony was introduced at his sex assault trial as two police detectives — including one who heard from Constand that she was gay — testified for prosecutors.
Jurors appeared riveted as Montgomery Township, Pa., police Detective James Reape slowly read Cosby’s description of the January 2004 night he gave Constand the pills at his suburban Philadelphia mansion and then initiated sexual contact.
“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,” Cosby said in the passage Reape read from one of the comic’s prior civil depositions.
“I go slowly. I don’t want to go to the orifice yet,” Cosby said in the passage tied to the 2005 civil lawsuit Cosby settled with Constand. He claimed during the deposition that Constand rubbed his erect penis and “may have moaned.”
“We are what could be called in a spooning position,” Cosby said, according to the deposition.
“I go inside of her pants . . . She then took her hand and put in on top of my hand to push it in further,” he claimed. “She makes a sound which I feel was an orgasm and she was wet. She was wet when I went in.”
Elsewhere in the deposition, Cosby admitted he received seven prescriptions for the nowbanned sedative Quaaludes so he could give them to women he found sexually attractive.
That portion was not read Thursday and is expected Friday.
Cosby, 79, has been charged with drugging and molesting Constand, a former employee of Temple University’s women’s basketball program.
His three counts of aggravated indecent assault each carry up to 10 years in prison. Cosby has pleaded not guilty and claims the sexual contact was consensual.
Constand, 44, told Cheltenham Township police Sgt. Richard Schaffer in early 2005 that she’s gay. She testified earlier this week that Cosby gave her three blue pills he claimed were “herbal” and then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay “frozen” on his couch. In an earlier 2005 police interview also read aloud Thursday, Cosby admitted he initiated the “petting” but said he couldn’t recall Constand touching his penis. “We are fully clothed. We are petting. I enjoyed it. And then I stopped, and I went up to bed,” Cosby told police, according to a transcript Schaffer read. “So you never had sexual intercourse?” the detective asked him. “Never asleep or awake,” Cosby said strangely. Asked whether he discussed the sexual contact with Constand’s mom during a phone call shortly before the police interview, Cosby confirmed he did. He bizarrely recalled “guaranteeing” to the concerned mom that “there was no penile penetration.”
Cosby claimed to police he’d been amorous with Constand on three prior occasions at his house, and only once did she tell him to stop.
Cosby claimed Constand never exhibited any symptoms of drowsiness after taking the Benadryl and willingly slept alone on a couch inside his massive home that night.
Schaffer conducted the interview with Cosby at a Midtown Manhattan law office on Jan. 26, 2005.