Norristown, Pa.
Judge Elizabeth McHugh took only a few moments to reach her decision after a contentious 3½-hour hearing in which Cosby’s defense team aggressively sought to batter the credibility of his accuser: former Temple University women’s basketball official Andrea Constand.
The 78-year-old actor sat listening intently, often rubbing his fingers across his chin, as his defense attorney, Brian McMonagle, blasted away at inconsistencies in statements given by Constand, who has said Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia estate 12 years ago.
Montgomery County, Pa., prosecutors opted not to call Constand as a witness Tuesday at a hearing that provided the first detailed courtroom airing of the case against Cosby. Instead, prosecutors relied heavily on an interview Constand conducted with police in January 2005, about a year after she says Cosby gave her pills at his estate that made her so woozy that her legs went “rubbery” and she had “blurred vision.”
The hearing was held to determine whether there is enough evidence for a trial to be scheduled on charges of aggravated indecent assault against Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 58 women, but is only facing criminal charges in Pennsylvania.
Prosecutors here had previously declined to charge Cosby, citing a lack of evidence.
McMonagle, his voice rising in anger and incredulity, pushed for a full-throated rebuttal of the prosecution’s case.
He pressed prosecution witnesses about Constand’s statement to police that she had not had contact with Cosby after the alleged assault.
“You knew that was a lie!” McMonagle said to Katherine Hart, who was involved in the early stages of the investigation and is now retired.
In fact, McMonagle said, phone records later showed that Constand had called Cosby a dozen times.
The defense also drilled down on corrections Constand made to a transcript police made of her interview, including deleting the words “nothing sexual” in her account of an evening she spent with Cosby at a casino.