Cosby accuser unruffled under cross-examination
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The cross-examination of Andrea Constand, the central accuser in the sexual assault case that could send Bill Cosby to prison for a decade or more, was anticipated as a slugging match for the ages.
For months, Cosby’s top-flight defense lawyers — and even a former Montgomery County district attorney — had vowed that Constand had irreparably harmed her own credibility with her behavior after the night of her alleged 2004 attack and in shifting stories she told police. They had sworn that once confronted in court, her accusation would collapse under the weight of its own inconsistencies.
But by the time she left the witness stand Wednesday, after hours of pointed defense questioning over two days, Constand had held firm.
“What was the one thing I asked you to do when I met you?” Assistant District Attorney Kristen Feden asked the 44-yearold former college basketball player just before her testimony concluded.
Constand replied: “Tell the truth.”
What the jury, however, made of Constand’s apparent unflappability remains an open question. Did she succeed in convincing them she was a victim of a 12-year-old sex crime or succumb to the defense portrayal of a woman who welcomed Cosby’s romantic overtures?
As cross-examination resumed Wednesday, Constand seemed unfazed when confronted by defense lawyer Angela Agrusa with the police statements and phone records she used to highlight to suggest holes in Constand’s account.
“I don’t know the contents of one to the other,” she said, when asked to explain slight differences between separate statements she gave to Cheltenham police in January 2005. “I can’t recall anything.”
Constand answered questions in the same calm manner she showed on Tuesday, when for the first time she publicly described in detail the attack that led to Cosby’s arrest on aggravated indecent assault charges.
And while jurors focused on her responses from the stand, Cosby offered little in the way of reaction.
Addressing her politely as “ma’am,” Agrusa suggested that Constand changed the date she originally said she was attacked by Cosby after obtaining her own phone records and realizing she had been awake and calling friends on the night she claimed to have been assaulted.
Cosby has maintained since Constand first came forward that the two shared several consensual romantic dalliances.
He has denied assaulting Constand or any of the more than 60 other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.