‘We now know ... the real Bill Cosby’
TV icon found guilty on all counts of sex assault
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Comedian and TV icon Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault at his sexual assault retrial here Thursday.
The conviction was not the outcome Cosby or his high-powered defense team wanted, but it was an answer to the question that has haunted America since October 2014: Is “America’s Dad” really a serial sexual predator who drugged and molested Andrea Constand at his home in January 2004?
The verdict came on the second day of deliberations, and after it was delivered, Judge Steven O’Neill thanked jurors for their service, then warned them about interactions with the media.
“You have sacrificed much, but you have sacrificed in the service of justice and in this country and this commonwealth and this county,” O’Neill said. “That is important.”
After the jury left the room, O’Neill said the $1 million bail Cosby posted was sufficient for him to remain free until sentencing. That set off a heated argument with Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, who wanted Cosby’s bail revoked because he was a pos- sible flight risk.
The judge cited Cosby’s age, health and the fact that he showed up for every court proceeding over two years. “I am not going to simply lock him up because of this,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill did not set a sentencing date, but typically sentencing takes place 60 to 90 days after a conviction.
Last June, another jury at Cosby’s first trial deadlocked after days of deliberations, and O’Neill declared a mistrial.
At the retrial, the jury of seven men and five women voted unanimously that Cosby was guilty. Cosby, who was charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault, could get 10 years in prison on each count. He has denied the charges and asserted that his sexual encounter with Constand was consensual and that he gave her only an over-thecounter allergy medication.
For Cosby, 80 and in poor health, any prison term is probably a death sentence.
Cosby did not address the media and left an hour after the verdict was delivered. His spokesman, Andrew Wyatt,
declined to issue a statement. His lead attorney, Tom Mersereau, indicated there would be an appeal.
At a news conference a few hours later, Steele said: “Today, we’re finally in a place to say that justice was done. ... We now know who the real Bill Cosby is.”
He cited Cosby’s courtroom outburst during the argument over the bail debate — Cosby stood up and shouted vulgarities at Steele.
“Everybody got a brief view of who he really is,” Steele said. “He was an actor for a long time. It was an act.”
Steele said the trials “revealed a man who spent decades preying on women, drugging and sexually assaulting them, who evaded this moment for far too long and used his network of supporters to help him conceal his crimes.”
He praised Constand for her “courage and resilience” in the face of attacks on her and her family, calling her “inspiring to all of us.”
He declined to discuss whether some or all of Cosby’s other accusers, including the five who testified at the retrial, would be allowed to testify at the sentencing.
“Victims should have a voice in this,” he said. “This area is somewhat gray in Pennsylvania law.”
Constand did not speak, but her attorney, Dolores Troiani, did, saying she, Troiani, was “so happy” about the outcome of the case. (Troiani represented Constand in her 2005 civil suit against Cosby, which was settled in 2006 after Cosby paid her $3.4 million.)
“Although justice was delayed, it was not denied,” Troiani said, praising Constand for her “courage, calm, her demeanor” in pursuing a criminal case in the face of enormous pressure.
Advocates for rape survivors and lawyers who represent many of the five dozen women who accused Cosby of being a serial rapist celebrated, saying the verdict was a win for sexual assault victims everywhere.
Gloria Allred, the women’s rights lawyer who represents half the Cosby accusers, was exultant as she addressed media cameras outside the courthouse, surrounded by some of her clients who had attended the trial.
“Guilty, guilty, guilty!” Allred exclaimed.
“We are vindicated, we are validated,” declared accuser Victoria Valentino.
Among the groups applauding the verdict were the National Organization for Women, the MS Foundation, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, UltraViolet, and RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
“The Cosby verdict is a long-awaited and symbolic victory for many survivors of sexual violence,” said Kristen Houser, spokeswoman for the violence resource center in Washington. “It brings hope that justice can be served when victims are finally ready to enter the court system, that it is possible for the truth to be heard, even if it is years after the assault.”
Advocates had mounted protests during both trials, including a topless protest on the opening day of the retrial.
But the jury, which was sequestered at a local hotel, saw and heard none of this. They were instructed not to let outside influences, such as the burgeoning Me Too movement to call out sexual harassment and assault, creep into the jury room.
“The pressure to be politically correct coming from the Me Too movement should not but unfortunately could influence the jury,” says California trial attorney Lara Yeretsian, who followed the case.
Cosby could appeal the conviction, arguing that the jury was biased, “but it’s not easy to show the jury was tainted,” Yeretsian says. “You have to get inside their minds to determine bias or hope they make statements to others to that effect.”
Stuart Slotnick, a New York criminal defense lawyer who has been following
“Today, we’re finally in a place to say that justice was done.”
District Attorney Kevin Steele
the case for more than two years, said he believes there are strong grounds for appeal, based on O’Neill’s still-unexplained change of mind to allow five other accusers to testify at the retrial.
“As we know from the first trial, the end of deliberations does not mean it’s over,” Slotnick said. “Was it overly prejudicial to allow five accusers to testify about uncharged crimes, thereby affecting the jury’s verdict unfairly? Clearly, one complainant and one additional accuser were not enough to procure a conviction at the first trial, and by allowing five additional women to testify, the judge really put his thumb on the scale.
“It’s possible the jurors will say they thought he was guilty because where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there was a lot of smoke” at the retrial, Slotnick said.
As for the kind of sentence Cosby could get, University at Buffalo law professor Michael Boucai, an expert in criminal law, said judges weigh “mitigating” and “aggravating” factors.
“In this case ... some would say that Cosby’s advanced age counsels in favor of leniency; others might see decades of comfortable impunity,” Boucai said. “Some might want to see Cosby treated more leniently in light of all the good he has done in other facets of his life; others may bristle at what they see as a particularly ugly hypocrisy.”
Steele, who failed to persuade the first jury, had a difficult job: an accusation of a 14-year-old sex crime. No physical or forensic evidence. An accuser who waited a year to report it. An acclaimed defendant whose iconic status garnered him support.
Cosby was charged in December 2015, just weeks before Pennsylvania’s unusually lengthy statute of limitations on sex crimes was about to expire. In the year before, Cosby was accused by 60 women who said he drugged and assaulted them in episodes dating back to the mid-1960s.
All of those accusations were too old to prosecute, except Constand’s. She did not report what she said happened to her until a year later, in 2005, but the-district attorney at the time said there was insufficient evidence to charge Cosby. So Constand filed a civil suit against him instead.
Cosby was deposed for the suit, which was settled and sealed in 2006; as Steele revealed in his opening statement at the retrial, Cosby paid Constand $3.4 million to settle the case.
After the first Cosby accusers began coming forward in October 2014, the Associated Press went to federal court seeking that the deposition Cosby gave in the civil suit be released “in the public interest,” and it won. Steele said at his news conference after the verdict that the decision on the deposition was the “decisive point” in his case.
In the deposition, Cosby acknowledged acquiring drugs, specifically quaaludes, to give to women he sought for sex. That gave county prosecutors new evidence to give Constand’s long-quiescent criminal case new life.
Much was made in the media and outside the courtroom about the fact the retrial took place in a dramatically different environment from last year — after the dawning of the Me Too movement that began in October 2017.
What happens outside a criminal courtroom is supposed to stay outside. But human nature is what it is, Yeretsian says.
“Jurors don’t live in a vacuum, and they could be responding sympathetically to the movement, even on a subconscious level,” Yeretsian says. “The diligent juror will do his or her best to only rely on the evidence presented in the courtroom. ... Still, the movement could sneak into the deliberations room.”