Cosby’s lurid decade-old testimony is read to 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 say 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 that 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 that 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 that he did not intend to testify at his trial.
In the deposition, Cosby said he gave her three halftablets 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 that 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 that Castor, long out of office, saw no case.