By Canadian Press

No verdict from Cosby jury; defence lawyers slammed

Apr 25, 2018 | 8:18 PM

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The jury in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case ended a marathon first day of deliberations without reaching a verdict Wednesday as his lawyers came under heavy criticism for what some called a blatant attempt to “victim-shame” the parade of women who have levelled accusations against the 80-year-old comedian.

In the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era, the panel of seven men and five women began weighing charges that Cosby drugged and molested a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home 14 years ago. He says his encounter with Andrea Constand, a Toronto native and former Temple University women’s basketball executive, was consensual.

The jury worked more than 10 hours before calling it a night late Wednesday. Deliberations resume Thursday.

“Your mind is done. You’re exhausted,” said Judge Steven O’Neill, sending them back to their hotel.

Trying to keep him out of prison, Cosby’s lawyers launched a withering attack on Constand and five other women who told the jury that the former TV star had drugged and assaulted them, too.

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Defence attorney Kathleen Bliss chastised Constand for “cavorting around with a married man old enough to be her grandfather.” She derided the other women as home-wreckers and suggested they made up their stories in a bid for money and fame.

She questioned the “personal morality” of one accuser and called another, model Janice Dickinson, a “failed starlet” and “aged-out model” who “sounds as though she slept with every man on the planet.”

And she slammed the #MeToo movement itself, calling Cosby its victim and likening it to a witch hunt or a lynching.

Critics said the defence team went too far.

“They’re playing on the same old myths that have been protecting perpetrators for centuries,” said Kristen Houser of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. She said the defence’s closing argument was filled with “rampant and ingrained” misconceptions about sexual assault and victim behaviour.

“It was not only an attack on these six accusers,” Houser said, “it was a verbal slap to survivors all across this country.”

Gloria Allred, the lawyer for three of the women who testified, blasted the defence closing as “victim-shaming and victim-blaming” and said Cosby’s lawyers had smeared her clients in a win-at-all-costs effort at an acquittal.

Perhaps anticipating the criticism, Bliss told jurors in her closing that “questioning an accuser is not blaming the victim.”

Cosby spokeswoman Ebonee Benson echoed that sentiment when asked Wednesday about the criticism of the defence approach.

“There is no assassination of any character,” Benson said. “It is evidence that the commonwealth either selectively, deliberately or just didn’t want to take a look into. That’s simply what it is. … If anyone did any assassinating yesterday, it was the commonwealth toward our witnesses.”

The back-and-forth outside court came as jurors began their work after a two-week trial that pitted Cosby, the former TV star once revered as “America’s Dad,” against Constand, 45, who testified that he knocked her out with three pills and violated her in 2004.

Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault. His first trial ended with a hung jury less than a year ago.

Before knocking off for the night, the jury had Cosby’s old deposition testimony read back to them.

Cosby gave the deposition more than a decade ago as part of Constand’s civil suit against him, testifying that he gave quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with back in the 1970s. He also spoke about his encounter with Constand, whom he paid nearly $3.4 million in a 2006 settlement of her claims.

The jurors also appeared to be focused on the credibility of star defence witness Marguerite Jackson, a former Temple colleague of Constand’s who claims Constand spoke of framing a prominent person for the money. Her trial testimony will be read back to them on Thursday.

Bill James, a defence lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas, said vigorous advocacy is a defence attorney’s job, and attacking an accuser’s credibility — especially if there are no other witnesses and no physical evidence — is standard practice in sexual assault cases.

“What’s good taste and what’s aggressive representation are not always the same,” he said. “In a criminal case you have a greater obligation to go after a witness’s credibility because you’re dealing with someone’s freedom.”

In her own closing argument, Cosby prosecutor Kristen Feden rebuked Bliss for engaging in “utterly shameful” and “filthy” character assassination of Constand and the others.

“She is the exact reason why women don’t report these crimes,” Feden said.

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This story has been corrected to show that Marguerite Jackson was a witness for the defence, not the prosecution.

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Follow Mike Sisak at https://twitter.com/mikesisak

Follow Claudia Lauer at https://twitter.com/ClaudiaLauer

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Associated Press writer Kristen de Groot in Philadelphia contributed to this story.

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For more coverage visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/CosbyonTrial

Michael R. Sisak And Claudia Lauer, The Associated Press