COSBY TRIAL BEGINS
Prosecutor says Bill Cosby paid female accuser nearly $3.4M
NORRISTOWN » Actor Bill Cosby was a trusted mentor who betrayed the friendship he had with former Temple University athletic department employee Andrea Constand by drugging and sexually assaulting her at his Cheltenham mansion, a prosecutor argued to a jury.
“This is a case about trust. This is a case about betrayal and that betrayal leading to the sexual assault of a woman named Andrea Constand,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele suggested to jurors during his opening statement as Cosby’s sexual assault retrial got under way on Monday.
“When someone is drugged, they do not have the ability to consent. That takes it away,” Steele added during a 75 minute opening statement.
Defense lawyer Thomas Mesereau Jr. will give his opening statement to jurors on Tuesday morning. Mesereau, who successfully represented singer Michael Jackson on molestation charges in 2004, is expected reveal a defense strategy that will portray Constand as greedy and having a financial motive to lie.
For the first time publicly, it was revealed, during Steele’s opening statement, that Cosby entered into a $3,380,000 civil settlement with Constand in October 2006. Judge Steven
T. O’Neill ruled previously that evidence of the civil settlement between Cosby and Constand, including the previously undisclosed monetary amount, was admissible evidence at the criminal trial.
Evidence of the civil settlement was not part of Cosby’s first trial in June 2017, which ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a verdict after two weeks of testimony and deliberations.
Steele’s opening statement didn’t come until late afternoon because the lawyers and the judge spent the morning in seclusion dealing with a defense request to have one male juror removed. In court papers, defense lawyers claimed a woman who was a prospective juror, during the selection process on April 4, overhead a man who subsequently was seated on the jury say to others, “I just think he’s guilty, so we can all be done and get out of here.”
Defense lawyers suggested that juror “may hold a fixed opinion” about the case.
All 18 jurors, the primary panel of 12 and the six alternates, were individually questioned by the judge and the lawyers out of earshot of the public and the media during the course of several hours on Monday. When the retrial did begin all the jurors that were selected last week remained on the panel. No juror was dismissed.
The day began dramatically when a topless protester leaped over a metal barricade and ran in front of Cosby and his publicists as they were on the walkway heading into the courthouse. The half-naked woman, her upper body adorned in red and black body paint listing the first names of Cosby’s accusers, shouted, “Hey, Hey Hey Women’s Lives Matter.”
Cosby and his publicists stopped in their tracks and county sheriff’s deputies immediately swarmed around the woman, forced her to the ground and took her into custody.
Officials identified the woman as Nicolle Rochelle, 38, of Little Falls, N.J. Rochelle faces a summary charge of disorderly conduct in connection with the 8:35 a.m. incident. With the charge, authorities alleged Rochelle had “the intent to cause a public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm… or created “a physically offensive condition” that served no legitimate purpose.
A conviction of a summary offense, which is similar to a traffic violation, usually carries a fine and no jail time.
Wearing a dark pinstriped suit, Cosby, 80, who is reportedly legally blind, appeared to listen attentively as Steele presented his opening remarks to the jury.
The trial represents the first time Cosby, who played Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” from 1984 to 1992, has been charged with a crime despite allegations from dozens of women who claimed they were assaulted by the entertainer.
William Henry Cosby Jr., as his name appears on charging documents, faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault in connection with his alleged contact with Constand.
Constand didn’t report the incident to police until January 2005, about a year after it allegedly occurred.
After an investigation, in February 2005, then District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. declined to file charges against Cosby, maintaining there was insufficient evidence to do so.
Prosecutors reopened the investigation of Cosby in July 2015 after portions of Cosby’s deposition connected to the civil suit was unsealed by a judge. In that deposition, Cosby gave damaging testimony, allegedly admitting he obtained quaaludes to give to women with whom he wanted to have sex.
The charges were lodged against Cosby on Dec. 30, 2015, before the 12-year statute of limitations to file charges expired.
Cosby, who did not testify during the first trial, has maintained the contact he had with Constand was consensual. If convicted of the charges, Cosby faces a possible maximum sentence of 15 to 30 years in prison.
Cosby remains free on 10 percent of $1 million bail, pending the outcome of his trial.
The newspaper does not normally identify victims of sex crimes without their consent but is using Constand’s name because she has identified herself publicly.