Closing arguments, deliberations loom in Bill Cosby retrial

NORRISTOWN, PA. » Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial is set to go to the jury on Tuesday, but not before closing arguments pitting the prosecution’s portrayal of a serial predator against the defense’s contention that he’s the victim of a “con artist” who made up drugging and molestation allegations to score a big payday.

The defense rested on Monday after the 80-yearold comedian said he wouldn’t testify, echoing his decision at his first trial, which ended in a hung jury last year.

“You now have all of the evidence,” Judge Steven O’Neill told jurors, sending them back to their sequestration hotel after an abbreviated day of testimony. “Try to relax, so that you’re on your game tomorrow.”

Jurors at Cosby’s first trial deliberated for five days without reaching a verdict on three related counts of aggravated indecent assault. Each carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

That trial hinged largely on chief accuser Andrea Constand’s testimony alleging that the “Cosby Show” star once known as America’s Dad knocked her out with three pills and violated her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in January 2004.

Cosby has said he gave Costand a cold and allergy medicine to help her relax before what he called a consensual sexual encounter.

The current panel of seven men and five women also heard from Constand, but both sides have given them much more to consider.

This time, prosecutors were able to call five additional accusers who testified that Cosby also drugged and violated them — including one woman who asked him through her tears, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”

Cosby’s new defense team, led by Michael Jackson lawyer Tom Mesereau, countered with a far more robust effort at stoking doubts about Constand’s credibility and raising questions about whether Cosby’s arrest was even legal.

The defense’s star witness was a former colleague of Constand who says Constand spoke of leveling false sexual assault accusations against a high-profile person for the purpose of filing a civil suit. Constand got a civil settlement of nearly $3.4 million from Cosby.

Both juries also heard from Cosby himself, via an explosive deposition he gave in 2005 and 2006 as part of Constand’s civil suit against him. In it, Cosby acknowledged he gave the sedative quaaludes to women before sex in the 1970s.

Cosby’s lawyers devoted the last two days of their case to travel records they say prove he couldn’t have been at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004. Cosby’s lawyers argue that any encounter there with Constand would have happened earlier, thus falling outside the statute of limitations.