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    In Opening Statements, Cosby Is Accused of Assaulting Judy Huth as Teenager

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    The trial stemming from Ms. Huth’s lawsuit, which says Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her when she was a minor, began in Los Angeles as her lawyers described what she says occurred in the Playboy Mansion.Bill Cosby had taken Judy Huth and her friend to the game room of the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975 when she asked to use the bathroom in an adjoining bedroom, Ms. Huth’s lawyers said in court on Wednesday.When she came out of the bathroom, Mr. Cosby was sitting on the bed. “He taps on the bed,” said Nathan Goldberg, a lawyer for Ms. Huth who has said she was 16 at the time, as if to say, “‘Come here.’”“When she did timidly, that’s when he pounced,” Mr. Goldberg said during opening statements in the trial of a civil case brought by Ms. Huth against Mr. Cosby for sexual assault.In their opening remarks, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers disputed Ms. Huth’s account, suggesting she had been an older, and willing, visitor to the Playboy Mansion who, by her own account, did not flee after an encounter with Mr. Cosby but rather stayed on for hours, swimming in the pool and watching a movie.“Boy, did Judy and Donna enjoy themselves,” a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, Jennifer Bonjean, said, referring to Ms. Huth and her friend.The trial, expected to last seven to 10 days, is being held at the Santa Monica branch of Los Angeles Superior Court.In their filings, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have denied the allegations, describing them as a fabrication. “We believe that Mr. Cosby will fully be exonerated once the jurors hear the evidence as well as examine the many inconsistent accounts given by Ms. Huth,” Mr. Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, said in a statement.The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has now reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.In detailing Ms. Huth’s account, Mr. Goldberg said Mr. Cosby tried to kiss her and put his hands down her pants. When she told him she was on her period, he dropped his pants, and “took her hand with his” and forced her to perform a sex act, he said.Mr. Goldberg spoke for a little more than an hour, recounting how Ms. Huth and her friend were playing Frisbee when they spotted Mr. Cosby filming a movie in a park in San Marino, Calif.He invited them onto the set and days later brought them to his tennis club, where, Mr. Goldberg continued, Mr. Cosby encouraged them to take a drink every time they lost at pool. Afterward, Mr. Goldberg said, Mr. Cosby had them follow him in a car to the Playboy Mansion, where the encounter in the game room occurred.Mr. Goldberg said Ms. Huth wanted to leave at that point, but her friend, Donna Samuelson, persuaded her to stay. Ms. Samuelson, who testified on Wednesday, said that Mr. Cosby had Ms. Huth “locked in the room,” and said Ms. Huth was crying when they went outside.“She grabbed her purse and said we are getting out of here,” Ms. Samuelson told the court. “She told me Bill Cosby tried to have sex with her.”She said she and Ms. Huth talked for about half an hour in her car, but she persuaded her friend to stay because she thought spending an evening at the mansion would calm her down.“She told me not to tell anyone,” said Ms. Samuelson. “It was embarrassing and humiliating to her.”They swam and ordered drinks, mingled with famous actors and, later, watched a movie. Only years later, in 2014, when Ms. Huth’s son turned 15 and other women started to come forward with similar accounts about Mr. Cosby, did the emotional damage of what had happened to Ms. Huth come to the fore, her lawyer said.“It was like a cork popped out of the bottle and all of her buried feelings rushed to the surface,” Mr. Goldberg said.Ms. Huth has produced photographs of the visit taken by Ms. Samuelson at the mansion showing Ms. Huth with Mr. Cosby. Ms. Bonjean accused Ms. Huth and her friend of “saving mementos of their rape,” raising questions about why a sexual assault victim would keep such tokens of the visit. The photographs were part of “a plan to make a buck,” said Ms. Bonjean, who spoke for about an hour. “Judy Huth has been trying to cash in on these photos for decades.”Mr. Cosby’s legal team has also introduced records from the Playboy Mansion that showed Mr. Cosby visiting with two unnamed guests, and said the records showed that the two guests had stayed at the mansion for about 12 hours. Ms. Huth’s suit, first filed in 2014, had been largely put on hold while Mr. Cosby was being criminally prosecuted in another case in Pennsylvania where he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. The 2018 criminal conviction in the Constand case was overturned last year by an appellate court on “due process” grounds, and he was freed from prison.Ms. Huth’s case is now being followed by some of the many other women who have accused Mr. Cosby of sexual misconduct, in part because it is the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. Mr. Cosby has denied all allegations of sexual assault, and said any encounters were consensual.Bill Cosby has denied sexually assaulting Ms. Huth and has challenged the timeline she has put forth of when they met. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Cosby has acknowledged meeting with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion but denied her allegation of sexual battery and has challenged her contention that she was a minor at the time.Ms. Huth’s legal team said it intends to introduce two other women to testify about similar encounters with Mr. Cosby.One of the women will testify, Mr. Goldberg said, that Mr. Cosby, whom she met at a doughnut store where she worked, was also taken to the Playboy Mansion by Mr. Cosby. In the game room, Mr. Cosby gave her a pill, the lawyer said, and he assaulted her as she lost consciousness.“In each instance, he meets them in circumstances that don’t appear threatening,” Mr. Goldberg said. “He takes them places where they seem comfortable. They don’t feel threatened in this mansion, the movie set. He does not care about their family or friends nearby. He has no fear.”Mr. Cosby, 84, has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify or attend the trial, his spokesman has said. Ms. Huth, 64, attended court Wednesday and is expected to testify later in the trial.Ms. Huth also reported her accusation to the police in 2014, but prosecutors declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.She was able to file a lawsuit because under California law, in some cases, the statute of limitations can be extended for people who say they only recently recognized as adults the damage done by a repressed incident of sexual abuse they experienced as a child.The deadline to file such a suit is determined in part by when the person, as an adult, becomes aware of the severe psychological effect of the abuse.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have questioned whether she had only remembered the alleged abuse a short time before filing the suit because, they said, she had contacted a tabloid about it 10 years earlier.They also tried to stop the trial from going ahead when Ms. Huth recently changed her recollection about when the encounter occurred. She initially said that it had happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently she concluded that it was actually in 1975, when she was 16. The law in California, then and now, holds that a 16-year-old is classified as a minor, but Mr. Cosby has contended that he did not meet Ms. Huth until several years later.She said she only recently realized she had the date wrong after, among other things, reviewing documents put forward by Mr. Cosby that clarified when the movie filming she recalled witnessing had taken place. More

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      Lawsuit Accusing Bill Cosby of Sexual Assault Heads to Trial

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      A civil suit accusing Mr. Cosby of assaulting a teenager in the 1970s, which he denies, will be the first to head to court since his criminal conviction was overturned last year.Judy Huth met Bill Cosby when she was still a teenager, she has recounted in court papers. It was the mid-1970s, and Mr. Cosby had already had his breakthrough on the TV series “I Spy” and become a movie star, but was still years away from his huge success on “The Cosby Show.” Ms. Huth and a friend spotted him on a film set in a park in San Marino, Calif., and ended up meeting him in person, according to her court filings.Days later, she asserts in the filings, she went to Mr. Cosby’s tennis club at his invitation, where he gave her and her friend alcohol before taking them to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, where she accuses him of forcing her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom. Mr. Cosby has described her account as a fabrication since the case was first filed in 2014.This week the job of deciding who is credible will fall to a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court, as the civil trial of Mr. Cosby on Ms. Huth’s accusations that he sexually assaulted her is scheduled to get underway.Ms. Huth’s recollection regarding when the encounter occurred has changed. She initially said that it had happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently she concluded that it was actually in 1975, when she was 16, according to court papers. Since the beginning, she has said in court papers that she recalled Mr. Cosby telling her and her friend to claim they were both 19 if asked at the mansion.The change of dates has led Mr. Cosby’s team to further dispute her account. Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in a statement that Ms. Huth had “made inconsistent statements since the inception of filing this civil suit against Mr. Cosby.” Ms. Huth has said that recently released information supplied by Mr. Cosby’s team had led her to reconsider what year it occurred.Judy Huth, left, in 2015 with her attorney, Gloria Allred.Anthony McCartney/Associated PressThe civil case, one of the last unsettled lawsuits against Mr. Cosby, was largely put on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued the criminal case that resulted in his 2018 conviction on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. But the conviction was overturned, and Mr. Cosby was released from prison last year when an appellate panel found that his due process rights had been violated when prosecutors ignored an assurance from a prior district attorney that Mr. Cosby would not be prosecuted.With the criminal case overturned, the significance of Ms. Huth’s suit has risen in the minds of some of the many women who have accused Mr. Cosby of being a sexual predator.“I think that Judy’s trial may be our last stand for justice and seeing accountability come to fruition in our stand against Bill Cosby,” Victoria Valentino, who says Mr. Cosby drugged and raped her in Los Angeles in 1969, said in a text. (Mr. Cosby has denied all allegations of sexual assault, and said any encounters were consensual.) She said she plans to attend part of the trial, which, barring a last-minute settlement, is set to begin with jury selection this week and opening arguments expected June 1.Patricia Steuer, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that she saw the Huth civil trial as a chance to get a measure of justice. “There is no other recourse at the moment,” she said. “It probably is the only avenue available.”Mr. Cosby, now 84, has already faced multiple other civil cases filed against him by women, many of whom sued him for defamation after his legal team dismissed as fictions their accusations of sexual misconduct by him. Eleven civil cases ended in settlements, with 10 of the settlements having been agreed to by Mr. Cosby’s former insurance company over his objections, according to his spokesman.Ms. Huth’s lawsuit is poised to become the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. In court papers, Ms. Huth says that in a bedroom at the Playboy Mansion, Mr. Cosby tried to put his hand down her pants and then forced her to fondle him.Ms. Huth filed her suit in December 2014, at a time when Mr. Cosby was facing allegations by many women who said he had drugged and sexually assaulted them, in incidents spanning several decades.She also reported her accusation to the police, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.Her lawyers argued that the period for a civil claim had not expired, however, because in California it is extended for adults who say they were victims of sexual abuse as minors but repressed the experience. The deadline to file such a suit is determined in part by when the person, as an adult, becomes aware of the severe psychological effect of the abuse, her lawyers said.In 2020, California law was amended to further extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault filings in civil court.Ms. Huth’s revised timeline, which says Mr. Cosby assaulted her when she was 16 rather than 15, should not affect her ability to pursue the suit since the law views a 16-year-old as a minor, Ms. Huth’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers argued in legal papers that they felt ambushed by the sudden change in Ms. Huth’s account. They said that their research had been geared toward establishing Mr. Cosby’s and Ms. Huth’s whereabouts in 1974, and said they had prepared evidence to show that the entertainer was not at the Playboy Mansion in the period she suggested in 1974.Log books from the Playboy Mansion for 1974 do not list either Ms. Huth or her friend as having visited, according to Mr. Cosby’s lawyers.At a hearing last week, the judge asked Playboy to produce records for 1975 and agreed that Ms. Huth and the friend who accompanied her should sit for a further deposition before the trial begins.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have also questioned whether she had only remembered the alleged abuse a short time before filing the suit because, they said, she had contacted a tabloid about it 10 years earlier.Mr. Wyatt, the spokesman for Mr. Cosby, said in the statement, “We feel confident that the Playboy records along with Ms. Huth changing her timeline of events from 1974 to 1975 in the 11th hour will vindicate Mr. Cosby.”Mr. Cosby acknowledged meeting with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion, and Ms. Huth has produced photographs of them together that she said were taken there, according to court papers. But he has denied that she was a minor when they met.“While defendant does not deny that he socialized with plaintiff at the Playboy Mansion, as he did other women and men who frequented the club,” his lawyers said in court papers, “defendant vehemently denies that plaintiff was underage.”Ms. Huth has said that she changed the timeline of her account in part because she only recently realized, as a result of documents put forward by Mr. Cosby, that the filming of the movie “Let’s Do It Again,” where she says they met, took place later than she had recalled.The trial is expected to last two weeks, and Ms. Huth, who is seeking damages from Mr. Cosby, is expected to testify, along with the friend who accompanied her to the Playboy Mansion. Mr. Cosby has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify. He will not attend the trial, Mr. Wyatt said.During pretrial hearings, Ms. Huth had asked for a bench trial, but the trial will be in front of a 12-person jury, with at least 9 of 12 votes needed for a conviction.Mr. Cosby settled a civil case Ms. Constand brought against him in 2006 for $3.4 million. The other civil cases were settled for undisclosed terms by the insurance carried on Mr. Cosby’s home policy, which provided “personal injury” coverage in a range of circumstances, including lawsuits that accused the policy holder of defamation.The other ongoing civil case against Mr. Cosby was filed last year by Lili Bernard, an actor and visual artist, who accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990, when she was 26. She was able to file the suit, which is still in its early stages, because in 2019 New Jersey overhauled its laws on the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases, extending the time limit for filing suits and creating a special two-year window allowing people to bring cases regardless of how long ago the alleged assaults might have occurred. More

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      Supreme Court Will Not Review Decision to Overturn Bill Cosby’s Conviction

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      Prosecutors had appealed a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had overturned the conviction on due process grounds.The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the bid by prosecutors in Pennsylvania to reinstate Bill Cosby’s conviction for sexual assault, a decision that ends the criminal case that had led to imprisonment for the man once known as America’s Dad.In an order issued Monday, the court said, without elaborating, that it had declined to hear the appeal filed by prosecutors last November.The Supreme Court’s decision leaves in place a ruling issued by an appellate court in Pennsylvania last year that had overturned Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction on due process grounds, allowing Mr. Cosby, 84, to walk free after serving nearly three years of a three-to-10-year prison sentence.Mr. Cosby had been found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home outside Philadelphia, though his lawyers argued at trial that the encounter, in 2004, had been consensual.The case, one of the first high-profile criminal prosecutions of the #MeToo era, drew widespread attention, in part because of Mr. Cosby’s celebrity and in part because dozens of women had over a period of years leveled similar accusations of sexual abuse against the entertainer. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last June that Mr. Cosby’s due process rights had been violated when the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office pursued a criminal case against him despite what the appellate court found was a binding verbal promise not to prosecute given to him by a previous district attorney.The former district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., who said he believed Ms. Constand but was not sure he could win a conviction, said he had agreed years ago not to press charges against Mr. Cosby to induce him to testify in a civil case brought by Ms. Constand. He said the substance of his promise was contained in a news release he issued at the time that said he found insufficient credible and admissible evidence. But he held out the possibility of a civil action “with a much lower standard of proof.” Ms. Constand later received $3.38 million as part of a settlement in her civil case against Mr. Cosby.During the civil case, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving narcotics to women as part of an effort to have sex with them, a statement that was later introduced as evidence at Mr. Cosby’s trial.Understand Bill Cosby’s Sexual Assault CaseBill Cosby was released from prison June 30, 2021, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault.Why He Was Released: Here’s a breakdown of the issues surrounding the ruling to overturn the conviction.What Legal Analysts Think: The court’s decision opened an unusually vigorous debate among the legal community.His Uncertain Future: Experts say it’s unlikely the ruling will change the public perception of the former star.The Aftermath: The Times critic Wesley Morris looks at what to do with our fondness for “The Cosby Show,” and W. Kamau Bell’s documentary series contextualizes his legacy.Following Mr. Cosby’s conviction in 2018, an intermediate appeals court in Pennsylvania found that no formal agreement never to prosecute had ever existed, a position that aligned with what the trial court had ruled.But in a 6-to-1 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that Mr. Cosby had, in fact, relied on Mr. Castor’s assurances that he wouldn’t be prosecuted, and that charging Mr. Cosby and using his testimony concerning drugs at the criminal trial had violated his due process rights.Prosecutors had argued that such a promise had never been made. They said that no one else in the district attorney’s office at the time had been made aware of it and that a news release could not be the basis of a formal immunity agreement.A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, welcomed the decision Monday, saying in a statement that the entertainer and his family “would like to offer our sincere gratitude to the justices of the United States Supreme Court for following the rules of law and protecting the Constitutional Rights of ALL American Citizens.”Ms. Constand and her lawyers released a statement Monday that criticized the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling, in particular faulting the panel for assuming “there was a valid agreement not to prosecute, which was vigorously disputed in the Habeas proceedings, and determined by the trial judge not to exist.”Andrea Constand and her lawyers have consistently taken issue with the reasoning of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in overturning Mr. Cosby’s conviction.Angela Lewis for The New York TimesThe Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, released a statement in which he expressed his appreciation to Ms. Constand and described petitioning for Supreme Court review as “the right thing to do,” even though there was only a small chance the court would take up the case.“All crime victims deserve to be heard, treated with respect and be supported through their day in court,” the statement continued. “I wish her the best as she moves forward in her life.”Mr. Cosby was first accused in 2005 of having molested Ms. Constand, then an employee of the Temple University basketball team for whom he had become a mentor. The case was reopened in 2015, and Mr. Cosby went through two trials, the first of which ended with a hung jury. The second ended in April 2018, with a jury in Montgomery County convicting Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.Both cases were closely watched by many of the women who came forward with similar accusations but statutes of limitations in their cases made further prosecutions unlikely.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the accusations that he was a sexual predator, suggesting that any encounters were completely consensual.Patricia Leary Steuer, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said in an interview on Monday that she felt “a little let down by the decision” but that “it does not change anything for me and the other survivors” since, she said, public sentiment is on their side.“The survivors did what we were supposed to do which was to come forward and tell the truth and that’s what we did,” she said. “The rest is out of our hands.”Legal experts had predicted it would be unlikely that the Supreme Court, which denies the vast majority of petitions for review, would take up the Cosby case. For one thing, they said, the case involved a unique set of circumstances that did not necessarily raise far-reaching constitutional issues.Dennis McAndrews, a Pennsylvania lawyer and former prosecutor who has followed the case, said the Supreme Court typically “looks to determine whether there are compelling issues of constitutional law about which the courts across the country need additional guidance, especially if the case is capable of repetition.”Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, said the Supreme Court likely considered whether its ruling would have the potential for broader significance outside the parameters of this case. “It’s a very unique set of circumstances,” he said. “It’s highly unlikely to be repeated.” More

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      In Bill Cosby Case, Supreme Court Is Asked to Toss Ruling That Freed Him

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      The prosecutors who brought the 2018 sexual assault case are appealing the decision in June by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that overturned the jury verdict.Prosecutors who say Bill Cosby belongs in prison are asking the United States Supreme Court to throw out an appellate court ruling earlier this year that overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault on due process grounds.Mr. Cosby walked free from prison in June after serving less than three years of a three-to-10-year sentence.His release followed a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that Mr. Cosby’s rights had been violated when the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office pursued a criminal case against him despite what the appellate court found was a binding “non-prosecution agreement” given to him by a previous district attorney.It was a dramatic reversal in one of the first high-profile criminal convictions of the #MeToo era.The petition for review, filed last Wednesday by the district attorney’s office but only made public Monday, challenges that decision, arguing that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court erred in its ruling.The Pennsylvania high court’s decision came in the case of Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee to whom Mr. Cosby had become a mentor. He was arrested in 2015 on charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home in a Philadelphia suburb 11 years earlier.The arrest came at a time when dozens of other women had already come forward to accuse Mr. Cosby of sexual assault or misconduct.A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, released a statement that referred to the decision to seek Supreme Court review as “a pathetic last-ditch effort.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“In short, the Montgomery County D.A. asks the United States Supreme Court to throw the Constitution out the window, as it did, to satisfy the #metoo mob,” the statement said. “There is no merit to the DA’s request which centers on the unique facts of the Cosby case and has no impact on important federal questions of law.”A lawyer for Ms. Constand, Bebe H. Kivitz, said Ms. Constand “is gratified that the District Attorney’s Office is appealing. This appeal demonstrates the prosecutors’ confidence in the verdict, and attempts to seek justice on behalf of all of Cosby’s victims.”The accusations against Mr. Cosby, and his eventual conviction on three charges of aggravated indecent assault, painted a disturbing portrait of a man who for decades had brightened America’s living rooms as a beloved entertainer and father figure.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the accusations that he was a sexual predator, suggesting that the encounter with Ms. Constand, and those with other accusers, had been completely consensual.It is by no means certain that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to hear the case. The court denies the vast majority of petitions seeking review.The justices only consider cases that involve federal law, and they rarely hear cases merely to correct erroneous rulings. Instead, they generally agree to hear cases in which lower courts have reached differing conclusions or ones involving legal issues of great public importance.Some legal experts had not expected prosecutors to file an appeal to the Supreme Court, seeing the case as a matter of state rather than federal law, and one that involves a specific set of circumstances that do not involve far-reaching constitutional issues.For the appeal to succeed, the justices would have to decide that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision relied on and misinterpreted a federal law or constitutional provision, experts said.“The district attorney’s office really strains in its petition to make this into a precedent-setting issue — it’s not,” said Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who has followed the case. “The unique facts make it highly unlikely that it would ever arise again.”Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have 30 days to respond, though they may seek an extension.Mr. Cosby’s appeal to Pennsylvania’s highest court had argued, among other issues, that the entertainer had relied on a previous prosecutor’s statement in 2005 that Mr. Cosby would not face charges in the case.The district attorney at the time, Bruce L. Castor Jr., had said he made the non-prosecution agreement verbally to Mr. Cosby’s lawyer, after determining there was insufficient evidence to win a prosecution on sex assault charges. He has pointed to a news release he issued announcing the end of the criminal investigation as evidence that an immunity agreement existed. He has subsequently testified that the agreement was intended to compel Mr. Cosby to testify in any civil suit that Ms. Constand might file by removing Mr. Cosby’s ability to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.Shortly after the criminal investigation was dropped, Ms. Constand did sue Mr. Cosby, and settled in 2006 for $3.38 million.During testimony in the civil suit, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex — evidence that played a key part in the criminal prosecution later brought by Mr. Castor’s successors.As the criminal case proceeded, the trial court — and an intermediate appeals court — found that no formal non-prosecution agreement ever existed.But in its 6-1 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that Mr. Cosby had, in fact, relied on Mr. Castor’s assurances that he wouldn’t be prosecuted and that the subsequent decision by a successor to charge Mr. Cosby violated the entertainer’s due process rights. The court barred a retrial, though two of the judges who voted in the majority dissented on that remedy.“Petitioning to ask the High Court for review was the right thing to do,” Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said Monday in a statement, “because of the precedent set in this case by the majority opinion of Pennsylvania Supreme Court that prosecutors’ statements in press releases now seemingly create immunity.”The district attorney’s office referenced an argument put forward by one of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices, Kevin Dougherty, who said in an opinion that no district attorney had the “power to impose on their successors — in perpetuity, no less — the kind of non-prosecution agreement that Castor sought to convey to Cosby.”In their 33-page filing, the prosecutors also tried to counter the argument that Mr. Cosby had a right to rely on what Mr. Castor said was a promise not to prosecute him further, asserting that “a reasonably prudent person would have been reckless to rely on a supposed guarantee that the prosecutor did not clearly convey and may not have had the power to grant.”Since being freed, Mr. Cosby, 84, has portrayed the decision as a full exoneration. The chief justice of the Pennsylvania high court, Max Baer, has said, though, that the court’s ruling did not find Mr. Cosby innocent, only unfairly prosecuted.Patricia Steuer, 65, who has accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that although she appreciated the effort to appeal what she viewed as a flawed decision, she was not optimistic about the outcome.“It never occurred to me that they’d petition to the U.S. Supreme Court,” she said. “I’m grateful for that, but I don’t have a lot of hope that he’ll end back in prison.”Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. More

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      Andrea Constand on Her Memoir and Cosby's Overturned Conviction

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      The call came just before noon.Andrea Constand had returned to her downtown Toronto apartment after walking her dog Maddy in a nearby park, when the Montgomery County district attorney’s office rang. Stand by, she was told, a ruling on Bill Cosby’s appeal could be handed down soon by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.By this day, June 30, Constand, the woman whose account of sexual assault had led to the conviction of the man once known as America’s Dad was finding ways to move past the trauma that the trial had brought to her daily life. She had sold her apartment, was moving to the countryside north of the city and preparing to publish a memoir, “The Moment,” to detail her singular experience with Cosby and the criminal justice system.Though more than 50 women had accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, including assault, prosecutors had — for a variety of reasons — only successfully brought criminal charges in her case. And now Cosby was in prison far away, serving a three- to 10-year sentence in Pennsylvania after having been found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.He had already lost an appeal. The dust once kicked up by the trial, by the verdict, by the media attention, by the focus on her case as a breakthrough “moment” for the #MeToo era, had largely settled.About an hour later, the phone rang again.“Andrea,” said Kate Delano, the district attorney’s director of communications, “the Supreme Court has vacated his conviction.”It is perhaps an understatement to say that for Constand, and many others, the decision came as a shock. Cosby would not only be freed: The court also ruled he could not be tried again. Constand said she found it deeply unsettling that Cosby, still a man of means and influence, was out of prison, unconstrained and able to contact her and others.“I had a lump in my throat,” Constand, 48, said in a rare in-depth interview last month near her new home north of Toronto. “I really felt they were setting a predator loose and that made me sick.”Bill Cosby with his lawyers outside his home in a Philadelphia suburb after being released from prison.Mark Makela/ReutersConstand’s reaction to the court decision and her long experience with the case are detailed in the memoir, which is to be released Tuesday.Within minutes of the second call, Constand drove off, heading with her 22-year-old niece to her sister’s home outside Toronto, a trip that had been planned before the afternoon became untethered by the ruling. From the car, she spoke by phone with the two former prosecutors who had helped lead the case against Cosby, Stewart Ryan and Kristen Gibbons Feden. They explained that Cosby would no longer be officially designated as a sexually violent predator, a status that requires lifetime public registration and community notification — something that had afforded Constand special comfort.Andrea Constand said she has no regrets about pursuing the case, despite the court’s decision. “Society paid attention,” she said. Angela Lewis for The New York TimesAt her sister’s house, she watched on television as Cosby got out of a car at his home near Philadelphia, the mansion where, she had testified, Cosby assaulted her after giving her a sedative in 2004. From her sister’s back porch, she worked over the phone with her two lawyers, Bebe H. Kivitz and Dolores M. Troiani, to put out a statement expressing their disappointment.Her phone was otherwise blowing up with calls from friends and other women who had accused Cosby of sexual assault. Kevin R. Steele, the district attorney who had overseen the prosecution, had called earlier to say the decision did not take away from what she had achieved.Still she worried, she said, that other women might find it too hard to come forward now. “It was not just me,” she said, “it was the message that it would send to the rest of the world and other survivors, to say, why should I fight for justice, when it ultimately gets stripped down. It won’t matter.”The first trial in her case had ended with a hung jury. Cosby’s defense team insisted his encounter with Constand had been consensual. For the second trial, prosecutors were allowed to introduce testimony from five additional women who, like Constand, said that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them.When the jury in the second trial found him guilty in 2018, many thought that, were there to be any appellate ruling, it would likely focus on whether it had been prejudicial to allow the women from other incidents to testify — evidence that prosecutors said showed a pattern of abuse.The book is being released on Tuesday.Penguin Random HouseBut the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on different grounds, finding that the district attorney had been bound by what a predecessor had called a promise he made never to charge Cosby in the case. The predecessor said he had made the promise to persuade Cosby to testify in a subsequent civil action, which Cosby settled by paying Constand $3.38 million. During his testimony in the civil case, Cosby acknowledged giving women quaaludes as part of an effort to have sex with them, a statement that the June ruling said had been unfairly introduced at the 2018 trial.Constand does not mince her words when it comes to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She blames it for undoing all the work she and others had done to bring Cosby to justice and for “putting him on the street.”“After a few deep breaths, I just felt this is not my problem,” she said. “Now it made me feel the shame is on the Supreme Court. It’s not on me anymore.”The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said in its decision that it was upholding an important safeguard: Cosby’s due process rights had been violated. Its ruling was meant to prevent dangerous prosecutorial overreach.Constand said that for days after the decision she fielded emails, texts and phone calls from people who were irate about the ruling. Many were from women who say they too were assaulted by Cosby and who had viewed the 2018 guilty verdict as justice for themselves. Some were now her friends. “They were devastated, they were so angry,” she said.The book, just weeks from its release date, had to be updated. A publisher’s note described the ruling and said Cosby’s conviction had been overturned “on a procedural issue.”Constand and supporters celebrated after Cosby was found guilty in April 2018.Pool photo by Mark MakelaThe statement Constand had devised with her lawyers was added as were about 400 words to describe her reaction to the court’s decision.“We cannot let moments of injustice quiet us,” she wrote. “We must speak up again and again and again — until we arrive at a moment of real change.”The case accounts for roughly two-thirds of the 240-page book. Constand takes readers inside her tussles with defense attorneys, who cast her as a disappointed lover in the first trial and a gold digger in the second. She describes the connections she felt with jurors, the long stays in hotel rooms, the stress and the sacrifices her family had to make.She got through it, she writes, with the help of her poodles, her spirituality and tattoos that give her strength. (The word “truth” is displayed across the top of her chest, a large phoenix on her back.)The book spends some time on her childhood in Canada, her years as a basketball player at the University of Arizona and playing professionally in Italy. It also delves into her relationships and coming out as gay.The memoir discusses other parts of Constand’s life, such as her success as a high school and college basketball player.Ron Bull/The Toronto Star, via Associated In the memoir, Constand describes herself as “wearied and weathered by what happened to me” and writes that Cosby had robbed a joyful young woman, the product of a nourishing family and happy childhood, of her smile. During an interview with The New York Times, she credited her faith for sustaining her and talked of starting a new chapter of her life.Constand started the book, helped by a co-writer, Meg Masters, more than a year before the court’s June decision, at the start of the pandemic lockdown, as a way to get closure.“The healer in me knew I had to dive back into everything again and really try to remember and it was really chilling for me at times,” she said. “Trauma is not wired for you to remember. It’s wired for you to forget.”During the writing, she got Covid-19 and was sick on her couch in Toronto for six weeks with “an elephant on my chest.” The experience, the encounter with her own mortality, propelled her to finish the book.“I thought it was important to write the story for other survivors who had stories, too,” she said. “I wanted to be a symbol of hope to them. That their stories matter. And their stories are important.”Despite the court’s decision, she said the years of hard work were by no means wasted. Cosby, now 84, served nearly three years in prison, she pointed out. Publicity from the case helped change attitudes. Women were encouraged to come forward. People believed them when they did. Several of the Cosby accusers helped with successful legislative efforts to extend or eliminate states’ statutes of limitations in sexual assault cases.“There were so many victories along the way,” she said. “Society paid attention.”In her memoir, Constand writes that Cosby had robbed a joyful young woman, the product of a nourishing family and happy childhood, of her smile. Angela Lewis for The New York TimesSince the court’s decision, Cosby has said he wants to re-emerge as a truly public personality, which Constand would have to contend with. He has taken to social media to proclaim the ruling a vindication of his innocence, an overstatement of the decision, which found he had not been given a fair trial, but did not exonerate him.But he still has 3.2 million Twitter followers, and the day after the decision he posted a clip of Constand talking about the night she said she was assaulted. It was paired with a statement that took issue with media reporting on his case.Constand said the posting showed a man emboldened by his new freedom who was trying to use it to damage her reputation.On the same day, she retweeted a post from her sexual abuse support foundation that said “Bill Cosby is not innocent.”But, otherwise, after a modest amount of publicity associated with her book, she said she intends to regain her privacy. She is not planning a book tour and said she wants to focus on her massage therapy business, which was hurt by the pandemic, and a nonprofit foundation she started, Hope Healing and Transformation. It provides resources for survivors of sexual assault, such as a library to help understand trauma, connections to lawyers and a platform for writing their stories. Some of the proceeds from her memoir are going to the foundation.She says it was her destiny to take on Cosby, in what was a “David and Goliath situation.”But would she do it again?Prosecutors are examining the possibility of appeal. If they won, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to block a third trial could be overturned. And Constand said she might put herself through another trial if asked, but it would be a difficult decision and she would have to consult her family.“Yeah, I would do it all over again,” she said. “If it was to do the right thing. I would do anything, as long as it was for the right reason.”Whatever happens, she says, the fact that Cosby walked free should not change what the case achieved.“I hope it doesn’t deter anybody,” she said. “I hope people will still find their voices. I hope that they don’t look at his freedom as a reason not to come forward. Quite the contrary, I hope they feel if Andrea can do it, I can do it.” More

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      Reasoning to Release Bill Cosby From Prison Disputed by Some Legal Analysts

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      The court decision that reversed the sexual assault conviction of Bill Cosby has prompted an unusual level of legal debate about the appropriate parameters of appellate review.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s conviction has opened an unusually vigorous debate among the legal community in that state, and beyond, with critics suggesting the justices had overstepped their bounds in reversing findings of fact embraced by the trial court.Since being freed from prison last month, Cosby, 84, has tried to portray the decision as a full exoneration.But the court did not find Cosby to be innocent of charges he had drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004.What it found was that prosecutors had violated Cosby’s due process rights by ignoring an oral promise a prior district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., says he made to Cosby in 2005, assuring him that he would be immune from prosecution in the case.Castor said he had determined there was insufficient evidence to charge Cosby. Castor hoped, he said, that by promising immunity he would remove Cosby’s ability to cite his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and induce him to testify in any civil suit Constand might file.Constand did file suit, and Cosby testified, acknowledging giving quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. At his criminal trial more than a decade later, prosecutors entered that statement into evidence.The Supreme Court ruled that Cosby had relied on Castor’s assurances when he provided the potentially incriminating evidence and that Castor’s successors, bound by his promise, should never have charged Cosby years later.But critics of the decision say that, unlike two lower courts, the justices ignored compelling reasons to question whether such a promise of immunity ever existed.“I think the court was in error and read the case incorrectly,” said Lynne M. Abraham, a former Philadelphia district attorney and judge. “The court’s decision was a terrible blow to victims and a blow to prosecutors’ ability to prosecute someone where the evidence tended to show he was a predator and when all sorts of things suggested there wasn’t a promise.”The Supreme Court decided to reverse Cosby’s sexual assault conviction because it found that Cosby had relied on a 2005 promise of immunity from Bruce L. Castor Jr., the district attorney at the time.Matt Rourke/Associated PressWhat is more, these critics say the court overstepped its traditional bounds as an appeals tribunal in reversing the findings of fact by the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, the trial court that had decided no binding promise existed. Appellate courts typically do not overturn findings of fact by the trial court if they are backed by the record. They serve to examine whether lower courts correctly interpreted the law and followed the procedures to ensure a fair trial. The facts, many legal analysts argue, are best determined by the trial court, which has heard witnesses and overseen evidence in person.“The most fundamental thing that struck me,” said Dennis McAndrews, a Pennsylvania lawyer and former prosecutor, “was they said the trial judge’s findings were supported by the record and they were bound by them and then they went off and made their own factual findings. It’s exceptional to see an appellate court go to such lengths to find their own facts.”Several veteran Pennsylvania-based lawyers said they could not remember a Supreme Court decision that had spurred so much second-guessing. Some law experts have taken to Twitter to publish critiques of the decision.Reaction to the ruling has been strong outside legal circles too, especially among the more than 50 other women who have accused Cosby of sexual abuse and who, because the statutes of limitations had run out, viewed the Constand case as perhaps their last shot at justice.In the midst of it all, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Max Baer, decided to discuss the ruling on television — a rarity for judges. He defended it and called Cosby’s prosecution a “reprehensible bait and switch” by the government.To be sure, there are lawyers who agree with him and who applaud the court’s 6-1 ruling, a notable consensus on a difficult matter. They believe it delivered a strong message about prosecutorial overreach — about district attorneys’ sticking by the promises they make, even if those promises were ill-advised. “They got it right on the due process violation because what Castor did was basically a promise,” said David Rudovsky, a defense attorney and senior fellow at University of Pennsylvania Law School.But the “promise” remains a matter of much dispute.Castor said that, although he believed Constand’s account, she had hurt her credibility as a complainant by waiting a year to report Cosby and by continuing to have contact with him after the alleged assault. He said he decided he could not secure a conviction, so he made the promise, he said, as a tactic to get Constand a measure of justice in the civil case.But the promise was never written down. The prosecutor who handled the Cosby investigation with Castor, his chief deputy, Risa Vetri Ferman, said he never told her about it. Castor pointed to a news release he had issued announcing the end of the criminal investigation as evidence that an immunity agreement existed. But the news release does not mention anything about immunity. It does mention the anticipated civil case.Daniel Filler, dean of Drexel University’s Kline School of Law, said one has to question whether the average person would have gotten the benefit of the doubt that Cosby did. “Because there is no documentation that this promise was made, only this public statement that does not track exactly with what Castor said,” he said.Castor said he briefed one of Cosby’s lawyers at the time about his plan to offer Cosby immunity. But the lawyer, Walter Phillips, was dead by the time the promise became an issue and Cosby was criminally charged in 2015. Another of Cosby’s lawyers from the original case, John Schmitt, testified that Phillips had told him about it.Castor said he also discussed the immunity arrangement at the time with Constand’s lawyers. The two lawyers, Dolores M. Troiani and Bebe H. Kivitz, denied that.Andrea Constand, left, and her lawyer Dolores Troiani. The lawyer has denied that Castor told her about the promise of immunity he says he made to Cosby.Matt Slocum/Associated PressGiven that there was no written immunity agreement, several lawyers said they found it odd that Cosby never drew attention to the promise he had secured before taking questions at his deposition in the civil case. Constand’s civil case ended in 2006 in a settlement under which she received $3.38 million. During the negotiations, court papers show that Cosby’s lawyers sought to include a provision barring her from cooperating with any future law enforcement investigation, though by Castor’s account, the lawyers had already secured immunity for their client.Critics of the Supreme Court’s decision point to what they say are the inconsistent explanations Castor gave about what he had agreed to. When the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office reopened the investigation into Cosby, Castor alerted the office that its prosecution might be hampered by a promise he had made. Castor was at the time campaigning to regain his former post as district attorney against an opponent who later made Castor’s decision not to prosecute Cosby in 2005 an issue in the race. Castor told the office in an email that his agreement with Cosby meant that the deposition testimony could not be used against the entertainer. But he said he had not given Cosby full immunity.“Naturally, if a prosecution could be made out without using what Cosby said, or anything derived from what Cosby said, I believed then and continue to believe that a prosecution is not precluded,” Castor wrote in the email.A few months later in court, he testified that, actually, the promise had extended full immunity to Cosby.The trial judge ultimately ruled in 2016 that Castor’s explanations of the agreement, and Schmitt’s corroborating testimony, were not credible.In an interview, Castor denied he had been inconsistent and said his meaning had always been that Cosby could never be prosecuted on the Constand charges. “The only way to guarantee, to unlock the Fifth Amendment protection was to guarantee he would not be prosecuted,” he said. He said that when he had said he was still open to prosecuting Cosby, he meant that prosecutors might be able to find evidence in the testimony about Cosby’s encounters with other women, not Constand.In its recent ruling, the Supreme Court agreed that Castor’s descriptions of the promise were “inconsistent and equivocal,” but it held that he had been the district attorney, a powerful position, and that Cosby had a right to rely on his assurances. It emphasized the fact that, although there had been no formal agreement, Cosby had agreed to sit for four days of deposition in the Constand civil suit, a decision the justices viewed as evidence that a promise must have existed. By their reasoning, Castor’s successors were breaking that promise, however informal, and undermining his due process rights by using his deposition against Cosby.“The law is clear that, based upon their unique role in the criminal justice system, prosecutors generally are bound by their assurances, particularly when defendants rely to their detriment upon those guarantees,” the court’s majority opinion said.In particular, the Supreme Court parsed the language of the 2005 news release in which Castor announced his decision not to prosecute Cosby. It read, in part: “The District Attorney does not intend to expound publicly on the details of his decision for fear that his opinions and analysis might be given undue weight by jurors in any contemplated civil action. District Attorney Castor cautions all parties to this matter that he will reconsider this decision should the need arise.”The trial court had read Castor’s statement as an acknowledgment that, rather than agreeing to never prosecute Cosby, Castor had retained the option of revisiting the case. That interpretation was in line with what Castor told the Philadelphia Inquirer about the news release in 2015. “I put in there that if any evidence surfaced that was admissible then I would revisit the issue,” he said.The Supreme Court, however, held that Castor was only holding open the possibility that he might again publicly discuss the case.Some legal analysts had thought Cosby stood a chance of overturning his conviction on different grounds. The trial court had allowed prosecutors to bring in five other women, who were not part of the case, to testify that they too had been drugged and assaulted by Cosby. Cosby’s lawyers had argued that a jury would have a difficult time looking past the testimony of the women in deciding what had happened with Constand.To the surprise of many lawyers watching the case, the Supreme Court said it did not need to address that issue because it was moot once the jurists had decided the prosecution should not have happened because of the promise.“The very premise that somehow this promise was made, it’s not in writing and this very rich, well-lawyered person relied upon it and it’s therefore enforceable, is crazy,” said Nancy Erika Smith, a civil rights lawyer in New Jersey. “The trial court saw Bruce Castor testify and found Bruce Castor not credible, usually that’s the end of the story.”The Supreme Court majority argued in its decision that it had not, in fact, gone beyond its role, and had not revisited facts already decided by the trial court. It pointed out that it had joined the trial court in finding that there had been no formal agreement. Two of the justices said Castor’s explanations for his actions were “odd and ever-shifting.”John F.X. Reilly, a former deputy district attorney in Pennsylvania’s Delaware County, said he was not persuaded.“The majority acknowledged but overlooked a fundamental principle of appellate review,” he said, “deference to a trial court’s factual findings that are supported by the record.”In reversing Cosby’s conviction, the Supreme Court ruled additionally that he could not be tried again on the Constand charges. Judge Baer, on television, said, unpopular or not, the decision was meant to prevent government overreach.“Nobody is sympathetic to Bill Cosby,” he said. “That’s to protect 13 million Pennsylvanians against that kind of conduct.”Prosecutors said they were examining the possibility of appeal. More

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      Her Book Described Bringing Bill Cosby to Justice. Then He Was Freed.

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      Months before Andrea Constand’s memoir about the Cosby case and its aftermath was set to be published, a Pennsylvania Court overturned his conviction for assaulting her and released him.Andrea Constand was taking what she has described as a step toward healing: 16 years after naming Bill Cosby in a lawsuit as the man who had sexually assaulted her, and three years after he was convicted and sentenced to prison for the crime, she was ready to tell her story in a memoir that is due to be published in September.The forthcoming book traces Ms. Constand’s journey from disbelieved accuser to a powerful voice in the #MeToo movement, one of dozens of women who came forward with similar accounts of abuse and misconduct by Mr. Cosby but the one who, in the words of her publisher, had “the power to bring him to justice.”But instead of having the last word, a key part of Ms. Constand’s narrative — if not her book — was rewritten Wednesday when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court freed Mr. Cosby on procedural grounds. The court did not exonerate Mr. Cosby, 83, but said that he should not have been charged because a previous district attorney had given him assurances that he would not be prosecuted.The court’s decision was “disappointing,” Ms. Constand and her lawyers said in a statement, which noted that they had not been consulted on, or even been made aware of, the closed-door prosecutorial maneuverings more than a decade ago that eventually allowed Mr. Cosby to walk out of a maximum-security prison near Philadelphia on Wednesday. And in a case once seen as a harbinger of women’s right to justice, the effect, Ms. Constand and her lawyers feared, would be to once again silence victims of assault.Andrea Constand’s Statement on Bill CosbyAndrea Constand and her legal team released a statement on Wednesday about the overturning of Bill Cosby’s conviction. Read it here.Read Document 1 pageFor other women who said that they had survived assaults or misconduct by Mr. Cosby — more than 50 have come forward — the whiplash was intense, especially for those who gave corroborating accounts in his criminal trial.“We know he’s guilty, but as far as I’m concerned, as of today, the justices that have made this decision have just enabled a criminal to go without a consequence,” Heidi Thomas, who testified that Mr. Cosby raped her in 1984, told a Denver news channel. “What message is that sending to other victims? To other perpetrators? This is one case, but the precedent they have just set is devastating.”Ms. Constand, 48, who is now a licensed massage therapist in her native Canada, has movingly described how much the Cosby case upended her life; she called her memoir “The Moment,” as in, the moment everything changed.“I’m a middle-aged woman who’s been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward,” she said in her victim impact statement before Mr. Cosby’s sentencing in 2018, describing the rippling aftereffects of the night when she said he drugged and violated her in his suburban Philadelphia mansion.At the time, in 2004, she was a 30-year-old director of operations with the Temple University women’s basketball team, and she considered Mr. Cosby, then 66, a grandfather-like friend and mentor. Their encounter — when she was literally immobilized by the pills Mr. Cosby gave her, according to her testimony — was a profound betrayal, she said.Her memoir, “The Moment,” is due to be published in September. Penguin Random House“Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it,” she said in her statement to the court. “He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others.”According to several published excerpts, her book, to be released by Viking Canada, describes her history as a confident, athletic youth from Toronto turned professional basketball player in Europe, who initially connected with Mr. Cosby, a Temple alumnus and donor, over sports.Recounting the assault, first to the police and prosecutors a year after she experienced it and then in a civil suit and two criminal trials, was re-traumatizing, she has said. Lawyers for Mr. Cosby sought to portray the interaction as consensual.“The attacks on my character continued, spilling over outside the courtroom steps, attempting to discredit me and cast me in false light,” she said in her statement to the court in 2018. “These character assassinations have caused me to suffer insurmountable stress and anxiety, which I still experience today.”Writing the memoir was meant to be an act of closure — a long-delayed one. “I did not want to lose any memories to time, and believe that reflection is a necessary final step toward true healing,” she said in an interview with her publisher, according to CBC Books. “By sharing stories, we can begin to help those whose lives have been impacted by sexual violence.”Neither Ms. Constand nor a representative for Viking Canada responded to requests for comment about the status of the book.In an excerpt that was published last month in Elle, Ms. Constand describes the moment in 2005 when she learned that Bruce L. Castor Jr., who was then the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, had decided not to move forward with her case.“It was yet another sharp blow in what had already been, without a doubt, the most difficult year of my life,” she wrote.It was a decision that would have unanticipated ramifications this year.Mr. Castor — who earlier this year was one of the lawyers representing President Donald J. Trump’s in his second impeachment trial — announced in a news release at the time that his investigation had found “insufficient” evidence to proceed with the case. He has since said that he assured Mr. Cosby that he would not be prosecuted to pave the way for Mr. Cosby to testify in Ms. Constand’s civil case. In depositions for the civil case, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex.When the civil case was settled in 2006 for $3.38 million, Ms. Constand later said, she believed that “this awful chapter in my life was over at last.”But when a new district attorney decided to pursue the charges that Mr. Castor had not, Ms. Constand agreed to once again put herself on the stand, though she was shamed and exhausted by the process, she has said.It ended with his conviction in 2018, a moment that was hailed at the time as a sign that in the #MeToo era the accounts of women would be given more credence.Though her story now has an unwelcome coda, Ms. Constand appears unbowed. On Thursday, she retweeted a message from Hope, Healing and Transformation, a foundation she started last year to offer guidance and support to survivors, which will receive a portion of the proceeds from her memoir. “Your story and voice matter right now more than ever. Silence is NOT an option. BILL COSBY IS NOT INNOCENT.” More

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      Bill Cosby, Free but Not Exonerated, Faces an Uncertain Future

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      Though his conviction was overturned, and his team is discussing future work, experts say it’s not likely the ruling will change the public perception of the former star.Since Bill Cosby left prison this week after three years of incarceration, flashing a defiant V-sign as he returned a free man to his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the talk of his inner circle has been celebratory, as those close to him described his first meal of fish and pizza and his determination to rehabilitate his legacy. More

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      Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction

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      The entertainer had been serving a three- to 10-year sentence in a prison outside Philadelphia.Bill Cosby was released from prison Wednesday after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault, a dramatic reversal in one of the first high-profile criminal trials of the #MeToo era.The court’s decision seemed likely to end the Pennsylvania case, legal experts said, and while more than 50 women across the nation have accused Mr. Cosby of sexual assault and misconduct, statutes of limitations in their cases makes further prosecutions unlikely.Mr. Cosby had served three years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a maximum-security prison outside Philadelphia when the court ruled that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor meant that Mr. Cosby should not have been charged in the case.Mr. Cosby, 83, returned to his home in suburban Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon where, looking frail and walking slowly, he was helped inside by his lawyer and a spokesman. He flashed a “V” sign as he reached his front door.The court’s decision overturned the first major criminal conviction of the #MeToo era, which came soon after allegations of sexual assault had been made against the powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The accusations and eventual conviction of Mr. Cosby stunned the nation, painting a disturbing portrait suggesting that a man who had brightened America’s living rooms as a beloved father figure had been a sexual predator.The case against Mr. Cosby began with his arrest in 2015 on charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted a woman at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs 11 years earlier. In April 2018, the jury convicted Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, to whom Mr. Cosby had been a mentor and who was at the time a Temple University employee.Ms. Constand had praised the guilty verdict at the time, saying, “Truth prevails,” and the National Organization for Women called it “a notice to sexual predators everywhere.” But Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, who had said at the time that allegations against Mr. Weinstein would make it difficult for them to receive a fair trial, later suggested in an appeal that the outcome had been influenced by what they described as a period of “public panic.”Andrea Constand, who had said “Truth prevails” when Mr. Cosby was convicted of sexually assaulting her, returning to the courtroom in 2018.Pool photo by David MaialettiIn a statement issued with her lawyers, Ms. Constand said Wednesday that the court’s ruling was “not only disappointing but of concern in that it may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant or may force a victim to choose between filing either a criminal or civil action.”In their 79-page opinion, the judges wrote that a previous prosecutor’s statement that Mr. Cosby would not face charges, which paved the way for Mr. Cosby to testify in a civil trial, meant that he should not have been charged in the case. It was a 6-to-1 ruling, with two of the judges in the majority dissenting on the remedy, which barred a retrial.Bill Cosby’s Conviction Is Overturned: Read the Court’s OpinionThe Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which overturned Mr. Cosby’s conviction, wrote that a “non-prosecution agreement” that had been struck with Bruce L. Castor Jr., the former district attorney, meant that Bill Cosby should not have been charged in the case for which he was convicted and sentenced in 2018. The court also barred a retrial. Read the full 79-page opinion.Read Document 79 pagesThe case began in 2005, when Mr. Cosby was investigated in the case of Ms. Constand, and a former district attorney of Montgomery County said that he had given Mr. Cosby his assurance that he would not be charged in the case. The former district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., announced in a news release at the time that after an investigation he had found “insufficient” evidence. He later testified that he had given Mr. Cosby the assurance to encourage him to testify in a subsequent civil case brought by Ms. Constand. (A civil suit she filed against Mr. Cosby was settled in 2006 for $3.38 million.)In that testimony, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving quaaludes to women he was pursuing for sex — evidence that played a key part in his trial after Mr. Castor’s successors reopened the case and charged Mr. Cosby in December 2015. That was just days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired in the case, and it came amid a number of new allegations from women who brought similar accusations of drugging and sexual assault against Mr. Cosby.“In light of these circumstances, the subsequent decision by successor D. A.s to prosecute Cosby violated Cosby’s due process rights,” the appeals ruling said.Mr. Cosby posted a picture of himself, with a fist raised above his head and his eyes closed, on Twitter, writing: “I have never changed my stance nor my story. I have always maintained my innocence.”Mr. Castor, who this year served as a lawyer for President Donald J. Trump during his second impeachment trial, said after the ruling was delivered on Wednesday that he believed his decision in 2005 had been “exonerated” by the ruling, calling the verdict a “shellacking” for the current district attorney’s office.“I was right back in 2005 and I’m right in 2021,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m proud of our Supreme Court for having the courage to make an unpopular decision.”Brian W. Perry, one of the lawyers representing Mr. Cosby, said he was “thrilled” with the ruling. “To be honest with you, we all believed, collectively, that this is how the case would end,” he said. “We did not think he was treated fairly and fortunately the Supreme Court agreed.”The Montgomery County District Attorney, Kevin R. Steele, said that he hoped the decision would not “dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims.”“He was found guilty by a jury and now goes free on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime,” Mr. Steele said in a statement. “I want to commend Cosby’s victim Andrea Constand for her bravery in coming forward and remaining steadfast throughout this long ordeal, as well as all of the other women who have shared similar experiences.”Patricia Steuer, 65, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said that she had been preparing herself for the possibility that Mr. Cosby’s conviction would be overturned but that she was still “a little stunned” by the court’s ruling on Wednesday.“I’m wondering what the 43-year ordeal that I went through was supposed to be about,” said Ms. Steuer, who said she found out about the decision on Facebook. But she said she was “consoled by the fact that I believe we did the only thing that we could, which is to come forward and tell the truth.”Scott Berkowitz, the president of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said: “We are deeply disappointed in today’s ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and by the message this decision sends to the brave survivors who came forward to seek justice for what Bill Cosby did to them. This is not justice.”Others expressed support for Mr. Cosby. Phylicia Rashad, who appeared as Mr. Cosby’s wife in “The Cosby Show,” praised the decision on Twitter. “FINALLY!!!!” Ms. Rashad, who was recently named the dean of Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, wrote on Twitter. “A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” (She later wrote: “I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth.”)The decision undoes a verdict that several women who said that they had been assaulted and raped by Mr. Cosby had praised at the time as a measure of justice that had been long in coming. In a victim impact statement filed with the court in 2018, Ms. Constand had said of Mr. Cosby: “We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”And Janice Dickinson, a former model who had told the court that Mr. Cosby raped her in 1982 after giving her a pill — her account was one of five women the prosecution presented from women who said he had drugged and sexually assaulted them — said after the sentencing that “My heart is beating out of my chest at the moment.”“This is fair and just,” she said in 2018. “I am victorious.”The issue of whether the trial court had improperly allowed additional women to testify was not considered because the panel ruled that Mr. Cosby had relied to his detriment on Mr. Castor’s promise and then made statements in the civil case that were effectively used as evidence against him.In a dissent, Justice Thomas G. Saylor disagreed that a statement Mr. Castor made in a news release represented an unconditional promise that bound his successor not to prosecute. Justice Kevin Dougherty, in a separate opinion in which he was joined by Justice Max Baer, found that though Mr. Cosby’s due process rights had been violated when he relied on Mr. Castor’s promise and testified in the civil case, the remedy should not have been barring further prosecution but throwing out the evidence the prosecution gained from Mr. Cosby’s testimony.The reversal now leaves Cosby’s career and reputation in limbo. His conviction, after years of dodging accusations that he had preyed on women, had seemed to cap the downfall of one of the world’s best-known entertainers.Its overturning undid what many women had seen as an early success of the #MeToo movement, a ruling which had been praised at the time as a sign that the accounts of female accusers were being afforded greater weight and credibility.Sydney Ember, Matt Stevens and Jon Hurdle contributed reporting. More