Bill Cosby Found Guilty On All Counts In Sexual Assault Retrial
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (CBS/AP) — Bill Cosby has been found guilty on all counts in his sexual assault retrial.
The jury deliberated for less than two days to determine the 80-year-old actor's fate.
During the first day of deliberations, the jury asked Judge Steven O'Neill the legal meaning of "consent." The judge told the jurors they had already been given the definitions of the charges. On the second day of deliberations, the jury revisited the testimony of star defense witness Marguerite Jackson who said accuser Andrea Constand once spoke of framing a prominent person to score a big payday.
Cosby did not take the stand in his retrial.
Seven men and five women saw a half-dozen accusers testify that the man once revered as "America's Dad" had a sordid secret life that involved preying on women for his own sexual gratification.
Cosby was charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault — all stemming from Andrea Constand's allegations that he knocked her out with three pills he called "your friends" and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in January 2004.
Each count carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Cosby has said he gave Constand 1½ tablets of the over-the-counter cold and allergy medicine Benadryl to help her relax before what he called a consensual sexual encounter.
The jury in Cosby's first trial weighed the evidence for more than 52 hours over six days without reaching a verdict.
This time, both sides gave the retrial jury much more to consider.
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 — not on the witness stand, but 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 could not have been at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004. They argue that any encounter there with Constand would have happened earlier, outside the statute of limitations.
Cosby's private jet records and travel itineraries produced by Cosby's lawyers do not show any flights in or out of the Philadelphia area in January 2004, but they have large gaps — a total of 17 days that month in which Cosby was not traveling, performing or taping TV appearances.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
