A protester was detained as Bill Cosby arrived for his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse, today, in Norristown, Pa. She said that nothing inappropriate had happened on the set with Cosby.
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The defense team, headed by Tom Mesereau, who successfully defended singer Michael Jackson at his 2005 child molestation trial, has said that Mr Cosby denies all allegations and any sexual encounters were consensual.
She told jurors that it’s common for victims to be reluctant to go to police and normal for them to maintain contact with perpetrators.
She added that it was not her intention to harm Cosby. Cosby lawyer Walter Phillips calls the allegations “pointedly freaky”.
Mesereau said Jackson was told by Constand she had been sexually assaulted by a “powerful person”.
Prosecutors opened the retrial on Monday in suburban Philadelphia with an answer to one of the case’s biggest questions. Cosby’s defense attorneys plan to try to undermine her testimony by arguing how “greedy” she was in a 2006 civil settlement with Cosby.
Mesereau tried to negate the impact of the women’s testimony by portraying their stories as irrelevant to the charges involving Constand.
The judge says he didn’t want to keep the jury late on the first day of the trial.
Police quickly tackled her into a bush and walked her, handcuffed, into the courthouse.
Nicolle Rochelle, 39, of Little Falls, New Jersey, ran in front of Cosby on Monday but was intercepted by sheriff’s deputies. She had “Women’s Lives Matter” written on her body in red ink along with the names of Cosby’s accusers.
The start of Cosby’s retrial was delayed for several hours Monday as the judge reviewed a motion brought by Cosby’s lawyers to dismiss a juror. Defense attorneys on Friday filed a motion to dismiss one juror.
Inside the courthouse, the trial faced a delay all morning after a jury member was overheard saying Cosby “was guilty” while waiting for jury selection review.
Bill Cosby’s sexual assault retrial likely won’t be anything like his first one.
The comedian, who has been publicly accused by nearly 60 women of sexual assault over more than four decades, has denied all charges.
Constand first reported that Cosby had drugged and raped her in 2005 after leaving her job at Temple University where Cosby was a trustee.
His retrial is now the most high-profile criminal case so far in a #MeToo world, the USA cultural watershed that has ruined the careers of a string of powerful men in Hollywood, politics and the media.
This time, four more women will allege The Cosby Show actor attacked them as he faces three charges of aggravated indecent assault at the courthouse in Norrisville, northwest of Philadelphia. He said he would rule on it during the trial.
The group has been re-energized by the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct.
A seven-man, five-woman jury was selected last week.
“This case really is a representation of how our country has dealt with sexual violence over the last 50 years”, said Sonia Ossorio, who leads the National Organization for Women of NY and was among the throng of protesters outside the court. “And we ask if she’s willing to help the commonwealth”, Steele told the jury. “The many reasons to say no to this are outweighed by the one simple reason to say yes: because it’s the right thing to do”.
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The particular complexity of this Cosby trial is that much of it pivots on the individual recollections of the parties involved; according to media reports there is no meaningful forensive evidence to be presented.
