What it took to finally convict Bill Cosby

On April 26, 2018, Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, whom he had met through her job at Temple University. As Nicole Weisensee Egan explains in her new book, “Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad” (Seal Press), Constand first went to the police in January 2005. Egan, then a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, aggressively pursued the story but, despite 13 other women coming forward with similar accounts, the DA closed the case a month later. In 2014, a video of comedian Hannibal Buress calling Cosby a rapist went viral, prompting more than 60 women to come forward saying he drugged and sexually assaulted them, or attempted to do one or the other. In 2015, the DA’s office reopened the case, charging Cosby with three counts of aggravated indecent assault.

His first trial, in 2017, ended in a mistrial. But he was convicted in 2018 at his second trial, which allowed testimony from five other accusers and a defense witness, Margo Jackson, who said Constand told her she framed Cosby for money.

Cosby, now serving a three-to 10-year sentence in a prison outside Philadelphia, has a private cell but mingles with the general population for meals and recreation. His only known visitors have been his publicists, but he speaks several times a day to his wife, Camille. He is appealing his conviction and sentence.

No one explains to a jury exactly how they are supposed to deliberate.

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