Cosby witness says Constand said she could frame celebrity
NORRISTOWN, PA. — The person who defence lawyers hope can single-handedly sink the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby took the stand for the first time Wednesday.
And as she did, Marguerite Jackson — a Temple academic adviser who says Andrea Constand once told her she could fabricate abuse claims to extort a celebrity — quickly got to the point.
“I asked her ... ‘Did this really happen to you?’ ” Jackson said, recalling the conversation she says she had with Constand in 2004. “She said: ‘No, it didn’t but I could say it did. I could quit my job. I could get money. I could go back to school and open up a business.’ ”
That purported statement by Constand — nearly a year before she reported she had been drugged and assaulted by Cosby — lies at the heart of defence the comedy icon’s lawyers began presenting Wednesday.
Defense lawyer Tom Mesereau has sought from the beginning to paint Constand as a gold-digging opportunist who framed Cosby for the $3.4-million civil settlement he ultimately paid her.
Constand maintains that conversation with Jackson never took place — an assertion that prompted Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill last spring to bar Jackson from testifying at Cosby’s first trial. But the judge reversed his decision for the retrial — and the defence made her its first, and likely star, witness.
Testifying on the claim for the first time, Jackson spoke in an assured tone, her head often cocked to the side.
She insisted she had shared a hotel room with Constand in February 2004 when the two travelled to Rhode Island with the Temple women’s basketball team — a team that employed Constand as an operations manager at the time.
As Jackson recalled it, a news report came on the TV about a famous person besieged by sexual assault claims, and Constand said something similar had happened to her.
“I was like, ‘Really? Who? When?’ ” Jackson told jurors.
She said she urged Constand to report it, but Constand insisted she couldn’t because her assailant was a “high-profile person” and she knew she couldn’t prove it.
It was only after asking three times, Jackson testified Wednesday, that Constand admitted it didn’t happen but said she could make it up and say it did.
“Ms. Constand asked why would these women make these allegations,” Jackson recalled. “I responded: ‘Money is a great motivator.’ ”
Jackson acknowledged that she heard Constand had tried to press charges against Cosby and sued him in 2005 but she said nothing at the time.
She was convinced to come forward, she testified Wednesday, after discussing the case with a comedian she met in late 2016 who put her in touch with Cosby’s lawyers.
Assistant District Attorney M. Stewart Ryan seized on that moment in his cross-examination, suggesting that Cosby’s lawyers had shaped Jackson’s testimony to suit their case.
He questioned her with a dismissive and scoffing tone.
“Did Ms. Constand tell you that as part of her master plan, that the person she would accuse would later admit to giving her pills that incapacitated her?” he asked.
“Did Ms. Constand tell you ... that the person she would accuse would admit to the sexual contact?”
The trial is expected to resume Thursday with testimony from a forensic drug expert.