Cosby’s graphic testimony could undercut defense

NORRISTOWN, Pa.—Bill Cosby’s own words from 2005 might have undercut his defense on sexual-assault charges.

Prosecutors on Tuesday sought to maximize the impact of Cosby’s graphic deposition, in which he testified about his sexual encounter with chief accuser Andrea Constand and acknowledged apologizing to her mother a year later “because I’m thinking this is a dirty old man with a young girl.”

Cosby, 80, testified more than a dozen years ago as part of a civil lawsuit that Constand filed against him, and prosecutors won the right to introduce it at his sexual-assault retrial on charges he drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home.

In a transcript read to the jury, Cosby testified he believed the encounter was in 2004, undermining his defense team’s assertion that it had to have been earlier and thus outside the criminal statute of limitations. Cosby was charged in late 2015.

Cosby also testified he didn’t think Constand had come forward to collect a big payday. But his defense team has called Constand a “con artist” who set him up by leveling false accusations of sexual assault.

Montgomery County Detective James Reape, who has been working on the Cosby investigation since it was reopened in 2015, told jurors he wasn’t concerned about inconsistencies in Constand’s story, such as her early uncertainty over the date of the alleged assault, because Cosby’s testimony had filled in many of the blanks.

“The defendant said it happened. The defendant said it happened in 2004. The defendant said he was present. The defendant admitted to the contact that she said happened,” Reape told jurors. “When I look at who, what, when, where, why in 2015, I’m able to see the answers.”

Reape made clear what he thinks of Cosby: “I have strong beliefs that he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand.”

Cosby says the encounter with Constand was consensual.

As prosecutors approached the end of their case, jurors were expected to hear more from the deposition on Wednesday, including Cosby’s explosive testimony about how he gave quaaludes to women before sex.

The unsealing of the deposition, at the request of The Associated Press, led prosecutors to reopen Cosby’s criminal case and shredded his good-guy persona as America’s Dad.

Jurors got a sense of Cosby’s view of consent when the comedian described in the deposition reaching an area “somewhere between permission and rejection” during what he claims was a prior sexual encounter with Constand.

“I’m giving Andrea time to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about an area that is right there in the question zone,” Cosby testified.

He said he rubbed the skin above her trousers and “without talking I’m asking can I go farther.”

“I don’t hear her say anything. And I don’t feel her say anything,” Cosby testified in the deposition. “And so I continue, and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped.”

He then described the purported encounter in extremely graphic terms that had several jurors with their hands to their chins, some of them looking taken aback, pained or disgusted.

Constand has testified she rejected Cosby’s prior advances.