In a description of the testimony of one of the witnesses against Bill Cosby in his second trial for sexual assault, we hear that one of the women remembered going to Cosby’s hotel suite for drinks and then waking up in her bed at home. That’s what she remembered.
Later, after hearing about the other accusations against Cosby, she suddenly “remembered” that she must have been sexually assaulted during that blank period of time because, after all, that’s what Bill Cosby does. Everybody knows it. Case closed.
Soon, she found herself on that bastion of unimpeachable journalism, the Dr. Phil show, thrilling millions with her lurid tale.
I’m not going to act surprised that a court allowed this testimony– it is no secret that real courts are not like TV or movie courts. They will often allow ridiculous evidence to be introduced, without effective challenge– like fiber evidence and blood splatter evidence. So a woman who admits that she has no memory of any such thing is allowed to assert that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her. And the purpose of this testimony– Cosby is not on trial for assaulting her– is to put the jury into the right mood for convicting him of assaulting Andrea Constand.
I will point out that “recovered memories”, which is what this is, have long been rather convincingly discredited, and that no burglar, for example, should ever be convicted even partly on the basis of a neighboring home owner telling the court that one day she came home and found that her house might have been broken into and things she did not remember owning might well have been stolen, and that a neighbor she had given a key to might be the culprit.
I hope an appeals court will think differently. [2023-20-22: Yes, the appeals court did think differently and tossed out the conviction.] I hope an appeals court throws the entire case out because it amounts to double jeopardy: Cosby reached a court supervised agreement with Andrea Constand in 2006 under which she was offered and accepted $3 million dollars to go away. This was not an agreement between two individuals: it was supervised and administered by a court, which certified that both parties had agreed to this settlement and that that would be the end of the legal procedure against Cosby. Cosby has, as you might expect, launched a civil action to recover the money.
There is a debate over whether Constand did violate the terms of the agreement.
I have no doubt that Bill Cosby was and is an asshole– I never liked him, not during his days as a stand-up comedian when he ducked the civil rights movement, and especially not as Cliff Huxtable, in a boring, sanitized, ridiculous sitcom– a black “Daddy Knows Best”. He played a denatured caricature of himself so that white audiences could safely enjoy his shtick.
But that does not make all of his accusers angels, and doesn’t remove the slight taint of suspicion that many of these actresses and models went to his hotel room or apartment hoping he would do something for their careers. He didn’t drag them there. He didn’t even pay them to come there. He just invited them and offered to help them with their careers. And these women accepted.
You might believe that they had no idea what a man might be up to when he invites a woman to his apartment or hotel suite, alone, or when he offers her drinks, or Quaaludes or benadryl, or massages their hair. No idea at all.
And in the current political climate, none of them will ever have to truthfully answer the question of just what they expected to happen there.
[whohit]Why Was This Allowed in Court[/whohit]