Deliberation begins in Cosby case

NORRISTOWN, PA. — The jury in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case began deliberating Wednesday in the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era, weighing charges he drugged and molested a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home 14 years ago.

The seven men and five women got the case after receiving final instructions from the judge.

The two-week trial pitted Cosby, the 80-yearold former TV star once beloved as “America’s Dad,” against Andrea Constand, a former Temple University sports administrator who testified that he knocked her out with three pills he called “your friends” and violated her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in January 2004. He said their encounter was consensual.

Cosby faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each carrying up to 10 years in prison.

Twice by late afternoon, the jury had questions for the judge, asking him for the legal meaning of “consent” and requesting to see written statements from prosecution star witness Marguerite Jackson, a former Temple colleague of Constand’s who testified that Constand spoke of framing a prominent person for the money before she went to the police about Cosby.

Judge Steve O’Neill told the jurors they had already been given the definitions of the charges, and he said they would have to rely on their memory of Jackson’s statements.

Deliberations got underway after a marathon day of closing arguments Tuesday that portrayed the comedian both as a calculating predator who is finally being brought to justice and as the victim of a multimillion-dollar frame-up by a “pathological liar.”

“The time for the defendant to escape justice is over. It’s finally time for the defendant to dine on the banquet of his own consequences,” prosecutor Stewart Ryan told the jury.