NORRISTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - The prosecution and Bill Cosby’s defense team are expected to begin closing arguments on Tuesday in his retrial on charges of drugging and raping a onetime friend, one of more than 50 women who have accused the comedian of sexual assault over the years.
Cosby, now 80, faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault of Andrea Constand, 45, a former administrator of the Temple University women’s basketball team, at his home outside Philadelphia in January 2004.
Cosby, who declined to testify on his own behalf on Monday, has denied wrongdoing, saying any sexual contact he had was consensual.
The comedian and television star also did not testify at his first trial on the same charges last year, when the deadlocked jury failed to reach a verdict, leading prosecutors to try him again. The current trial, now in its third week at Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, began on April 9.
Cosby, who played the loveable patriarch on “The Cosby Show,” a TV comedy that aired from 1984 to 1992, entered the courthouse on Tuesday morning wearing a black business suit.
His spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, said the comedian’s wife Camille, was planning to be in court for the first time during the retrial, but she did not enter with her husband, and it was not clear when she would turn up.
More than four dozen women have accused Cosby of sexual assault, sometimes after drugging them, some of the cases going back decades. All the accusations, apart from Constand’s, were too old to be the subject of criminal prosecution.
As she waited in line on Tuesday to enter the courthouse, Victoria Valentino, 75, a former Playboy magazine centerfold who accuses Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1969, said she was pleased that the trial would wrap up soon.
“I’m feeling very excited,” said Valentino, who lives in Pasadena, California, and also attended Cosby’s first trial. “The prosecution was extraordinarily strong this time.”
If convicted of all three counts, Cosby would probably face at most 10 years in prison as a first offender under state sentencing guidelines, although Pennsylvania law allows for a maximum penalty of three consecutive 10-year sentences, a prosecution spokeswoman said.
Cosby’s lawyers wrapped up their case on Monday by using phone and flight records from January 2004 to try again to convince the jury that the comedian was not at his Philadelphia home at the time of the alleged crime.
The timing is crucial, since Cosby was not criminally charged until December 2015, just days before the 12-year Pennsylvania statute of limitations would have expired. The defense has sought to show that a consensual encounter occurred earlier than January 2004.
Douglas Moss, an expert on aviation record-keeping, said Cosby’s trips around the United States in January 2004 were accurately reflected in flight logs kept by his private jet pilot, who now suffers from dementia.
District Attorney Kevin Steele sought to show that Cosby could have used other modes of transport to travel to Philadelphia.
Writing by Frank McGurty; editing by Jonathan Oatis
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