Accuser talked of framing Cosby, witness says
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The chief accuser at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial talked about framing a celebrity before going to police with her allegations in 2005, a key defense witness testified Wednesday as the TV star’s lawyers began presenting their case.
Marguerite Jackson, an academic adviser at Temple University, said Andrea Constand told her that she could fabricate sexual assault allegations and “get that money” from a civil suit, bolstering Cosby’s efforts to show Constand made up the allegations against him to extort a big civil settlement.
Jackson’s account was immediately challenged by prosecutors, who suggested that she wasn’t on the trip where she says her conversation with Constand took place.
Jackson took the witness stand after a judge overruled prosecutors and said she could tell her story to the jury.
She said Constand spoke of the plot while they were rooming together on a road trip to Rhode Island with the Temple University women’s basketball team, where Constand was working as operations director.
After watching a TV news report about a celebrity who had been accused of sexual assault, Jackson said Constand told her: “Oh wow, something similar happened to me.”
Constand said she never reported the assault because her assailant was a “high-profile person” and she knew she couldn’t prove it, Jackson testified.
Jackson said she encouraged Constand to report it. She told jurors that Constand then switched gears, saying: “No it didn’t, but I could say it did. I could say it happened, get that money. I could quit my job. I could go back to school. I could open up a business.”
Jackson said the conversation happened Feb. 1, 2004, a few weeks after Constand says Cosby drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia home. The defense hoped Jackson’s testimony would bolster Cosby’s efforts to show Constand fabricated the allegations against him to extort a big civil settlement. Cosby paid Constand nearly $3.4 million in 2006.
Constand testified Monday that she didn’t “recall ever having a conversation with” Jackson.
On cross-examination, prosecutors produced records of Jackson’s travel to other away games but not to the one at the University of Rhode Island, where she says this conversation happened.
Judge Steven O’Neill blocked Jackson from taking the stand at Cosby’s first trial last year, ruling that her testimony would be hearsay after Constand told the jury she didn’t know her.
The judge changed his mind about Jackson for the retrial, giving the defense case a boost.
Prosecutors wound down their case earlier Wednesday, introducing the comedian’s testimony about giving quaaludes to women before sex — an old admission that’s taken on new significance after a half-dozen women testified that he drugged and violated them.
A police detective read a transcript of the 2005 testimony as prosecutors saved for the very end of their case Cosby’s own words about using the 1970s party drug “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink.’”
Cosby, now 80, is being retried on charges that he drugged and molested Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home. He says their encounter was consensual.
Cosby was deposed in 2005 and 2006 after Constand filed suit against him. The deposition was hidden from public view until 2015, when The Associated Press petitioned to have it unsealed, leading prosecutors to reopen the criminal case.
Jurors at Cosby’s first trial last year also heard excerpts from the deposition but deadlocked on sexual assault charges.
The AP doesn’t typically identify people who say they’re victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.
The defense case will resume today.