Cosby: More questions than answers

When there is a closely contested election, the recount takes place immediately.

Not months or weeks later, and certainly not a year past the election, but as soon as possible.

That way, the results can be certified in a reasonable amount of time.

Even more important, irregularities can be investigated while they are still fresh in the minds of witnesses.

Likewise, after a car accident, the first two things we do – immediately – are call the police, and notify our insurance company. We don’t wait until next week or the following month, and if we decided to report the crash a year later, we’d be laughed out of the room.

The rationale is obvious: Recounting exactly what happened is always – always – most accurate when details are front-and-center in our consciousness.

So it’s no surprise that Bill Cosby wasn’t found guilty in his sexual assault trial.

After all, his accuser, Andrea Constand, chose not to immediately report the incident to police after it allegedly occurred. Instead, she waited.

And waited. And waited some more.

Ultimately, it took Constand a full year to file a criminal complaint, which, as she admitted, led to memory lapses and fuzzy details.

And that, combined with other Constand inconsistencies, gave jurors enough reasonable doubt to bring about a deadlock, and a mistrial.

The person who comes out smelling like a rose, as usual, is former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, who declined to press charges in 2004 due to lack of evidence. Did he want to? Yes. “Back then, the desire on our part to move forward was pretty strong,” Castor said. “The problem with the case was she waited a year until she told police about it.”

Because of that delay, no physical and forensic evidence could be gathered, no blood, urine and fingernail samples could be taken, and no search warrant of Cosby’s home could be issued.

In addition to Constand’s year-long delay in reporting the alleged assault, her testimony was filled with inconsistencies.

Two glaring ones that likely affected the jury were: A) Stating that she had never been alone with Cosby before (when, in reality, she had been alone with him in a hotel room before their encounter at Cosby’s house), and,

B) Stating that she had cut off contact with Cosby after the incident, when in fact they had communicated via 72 phone calls, 53 of them initiated by Constand.

Does any of this make Constand a liar, and does it mean that she wasn’t sexually assaulted by Cosby? Absolutely not. Constand may well be telling the truth, but as they teach in law school, it’s not what you know – it’s what you can prove. Where does it go from here? District Attorney Steele made Cosby the banner issue in his campaign, and is now faced with a reap-what-yousow situation.

Justice should be blind to politics, but Steele, in choosing to make them one and the same, has boxed himself into a conundrum.

How ironic that Castor – whom Steele defeated – may yet have the last laugh.

Politics aside, there will be another huge outlay of taxpayer dollars should there be another trial – a trial that has no better chance of being decided one way or the other than the first.

Cosby, at 79 years old and a decrepit old man, poses no danger to society.

Since he will be hounded by never-ending civil suits for the rest of his life – likely paying out millions – and has seen his reputation plunge from “America’s Dad” to dirtball in the eyes of millions, perhaps it’s time for D.A. Steele to move on, as he clearly has more pressing, albeit less headline-inducing, cases to try.

In the meantime, Cosby, at least for now, can say, “Hey, hey, hey! Jell-O Puddin’ Pops for the jury today!”

And the rest of us are left lamenting about how our beloved Dr. Huxtable went so terribly wrong.