Jury in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial begins deliberations
The defense rested its case today.
— -- The witnesses have testified, and the closing arguments were made. Now Bill Cosby's fate is in the hands of 12 jurors.
The jurors, who began deliberating Monday evening, went home on Monday night without delivering a verdict. Earlier in the evening, they requested to see the entire context of Cosby’s testimony “where he calls the pills his friends.”
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele opened his closing argument on Monday afternoon with the quote, which was from a deposition Cosby gave more than a decade ago about drugs he gave to accuser Andrea Constand.
Cosby has said he gave her Benadryl; Constand claims that he gave her a substance that incapacitated her.
"I went upstairs and into my pack, broke one in half and took another half and brought them down and said to her ‘Your friends, I have three friends for you to make you relax,'" Cosby said.
Cosby's lawyers rested their case on Monday after calling just one witness — a detective — to defend the comedian against accusations of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand more than a decade ago.
The comedian did not testify in the six-day trial.
Steele, in his closing argument on Monday afternoon, described Cosby as a calculating sexual predator who not only drugged and assaulted Constand more than a decade ago but also cruelly recast the attack as consensual and romantic.
"To allege that this is just some relations that is going to another level just doesn't make sense," Steele said. "If you have sexual relations with somebody when they're out, when they're asleep, when they're unconscious, that's a crime. That's a crime ... By doing what he did on that night, he took away that ability, he took that from Andrea Constand. He gave her no choice in this matter."
Earlier in the day, Brian McMonagle, one of Cosby's lawyers, also delivered a dramatic closing argument, highlighting Constand's inconsistencies and those of Kelly Johnson, another accuser who testified on Constand's behalf.
"[Treat the verdict] as if somebody's life depends on it, folks," he told the jurors. "We're talking about all the man's tomorrows."
On-hand for the proceedings was Cosby's wife, Camille, who attended the proceedings for the first time on Monday.
Camille Cosby, 73, was deposed in February 2016 in a defamation case brought by several women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
Constand, 44, testified for seven hours over the course of two days last week, telling the jury that Bill Cosby gave her a drug at his home in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in 2004. After that, she said, he sexually assaulted her.
"In my head I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move, but I was frozen, and those messages didn't get there, and I was very limp, so I wasn't able to fight him," she said. "I wanted it to stop."
According to portions of a deposition Cosby gave in 2005 and 2006, he gave her Benadryl to "relax" her during a consensual sexual encounter.
"I wanted her to be comfortable and relaxed and be able to go to sleep after our necking session," he said.
The jury also heard quotes from Cosby's deposition about his use of Quaaludes in the 1970s. He admitted to giving the prescription sedative to multiple women with whom he wanted to have sex and said he didn't take the drug. But he did not admit to giving Quaaludes to anyone without her knowledge.
"What was happening at that time [in the 1970s] was that at that time Quaaludes happened to be the drugs kids, young people, were using to party with, and there were times when I wanted to have them just in case," he said.
The prosecution called on Johnson, who alleged that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1996, to testify, as well as a forensic toxicologist, a sexual assault expert and Constand's mother, Gianna Constand.
Cosby has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault. More than 50 women have accused him of drugging them or of sexual misconduct, but aside from this case, he has not been charged with any crimes and has repeatedly denied all allegations against him.
If convicted, Cosby faces 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
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