Bill Cosby Is Found Guilty on All 3 Counts in Sexual Assault Retrial

Bill Cosby was found guilty of three counts of felony second-degree aggravated indecent assault in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, in the first major criminal consequence for a celebrity accused of sexual misconduct since the post-Weinstein #MeToo movement began in October 2017. Last year’s trial ended with a different jury deadlocked on whether Cosby, 80, had drugged and assaulted Andrea Constand, 45, a former Temple University employee, at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. In addition to Constand, five other women testified to similar experiences at the hands of Cosby at his retrial; the jury also heard from deposition testimony Cosby gave in 2005, admitting to giving women quaaludes before having sex with them. At his sentencing, he will face a maximum of 10 years and a fine of up to $25,000 on each count.

In the first trial against Cosby, the defense questioned Constand about why she took a year to report the incident and why she continued to have contact with Cosby after the fact. This time, Judge Steven O’Neill allowed five additional women to testify for the prosecution (in the first trial, only Constand and another woman, Kelly Johnson, were allowed on the stand). The jury reportedly returned to the courtroom to ask, a few hours into deliberation, “What is the legal definition of consent?” O’Neill responded that they would have to use their own “common sense.”

While more accusers, including former supermodel Janice Dickinson, were allowed to testify about their encounters with Cosby, they were exposed to intense scrutiny from the defense, who focused on their sexual histories. Lili Bernard, a Cosby accuser who sat in the courtroom, said that the defense’s strategy “was based solely on rape myths, on victim blaming, on victim shaming, and on a character assassination of really credible witnesses, of very righteous victims, of victims that were clearly telling the truth.”