Bill Cosby's lawyers close their case; closing arguments to start Tuesday

Bill Cosby's defense rested its case Monday after calling 10 witnesses over four days to suggest that Andrea Constand fabricated her sex-assault allegations to get Cosby's money and that the entertainer was not even at his Cheltenham home around the time she said he drugged and attacked her there.

The 80-year-old entertainer chose not to take the witness stand in his own behalf, paving the way for lawyers on both sides to deliver closing arguments Tuesday. The jury of seven men and five women, who have been sequestered since the trial in Norristown began, could get the case before the day ends.

Cosby's retrial on three counts of aggravated indecent assault has been longer than his first, which went to the jury after six days of testimony and ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial.

This time, prosecutors were permitted to call five additional accusers, who testified over three days that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them in the 1980s. Defense witnesses included a Temple University employee who said Constand had spoken about a plan to fabricate sex assault claims against a celebrity to make money. Most of the other defense witnesses testified briefly about working for Cosby or meeting Constand through him.

As testimony wound down on Monday, Cosby's lawyers announced he would not testify. When Judge Steven T. O'Neill asked the defendant if he agreed with that decision, Cosby loudly replied: "Yes, your honor."

Earlier, his lawyers had sought to bolster their claim that Cosby couldn't have been home at the time Constand says the assault occurred in early 2004.

Roslyn Yarbrough, a former executive assistant for Cosby's agent, told jurors that the entertainer was "very rarely, seldomly" at his Cheltenham home. Yarbrough also said she spoke to Cosby by phone daily and prepared detailed itineraries for his trips during the decade that she worked for the William Morris Agency.

She described pages of itineraries for January 2004, including flight schedules, logs of payments Cosby received for his shows – with the amount of money he made redacted. The records didn't show trips to Philadelphia that month.

Cosby's lawyers had a reason to focus on dates: Pennsylvania criminal law requires sex assaults be charged within 12 years of the crime.

Cosby was arrested at the end of 2015, so if Constand's alleged assault occurred sometime before Dec. 30, 2003, the charges would fall beyond the statute of limitations. And if his lawyers manage to convince jurors of that fact, the panel could not convict Cosby — even if the jurors believed that Constand was assaulted.

Yarbrough, who worked as executive assistant to Cosby's agent, Tom Illius, said she started work in 1996, and stayed in her position with the William Morris Agency until 2006.

Prosecutors emphasized on cross-examination that Cosby's whereabouts were not always clear in the schedules Yarbrough prepared.

Asked about one record that showed Cosby's planned itinerary but no final destination, she acknowledged: "He was deciding his destination. Sometimes we didn't know which city he wanted to go to."

A pilot and aviation expert testified that Cosby's plane records should accurately describe his 2004 travel on his private plane because federal regulations require thorough record keeping. Those records did not show flights to Philadelphia in January 2004.

Prosecutors sought to undermine that line of defense by noting March 16, 2004 — a night Cosby, Constand and others dined out in Philadelphia (and one where she said she later attempted to confront him about the alleged assault). But the entertainer's plane records showed no flight to Philadelphia around that time.

"You couldn't tell us whether or not the defendant got on a different plane?…. You can't tell us whether or not he got on a train? … You can't tell us whether or not he got in a car, say he drove from New York to Philadelphia?" District Attorney Kevin R. Steele asked the aviation expert, Douglas Moss.

"No, I cannot," Moss said.

The judge also blocked two pieces of the defense case Monday.

O'Neill ruled that Cosby's lawyers could not introduce deposition testimony from Andrea Constand's friend Sheri Williams. The defense team wanted to subpoena Williams to testify — she and Constand had regular contact during the time of the alleged assault, phone records show —  but they could not find her. Instead, they asked to read to jurors her deposition from Constand's 2005 lawsuit against Cosby.

O'Neill also ruled that Cosby's lawyers could not call their private investigator as a witness to piece together and explain for jurors the phone records, travel records, and tour schedules in the case.

"It sounds like a great closing argument if someone had put all that together," the judge said.

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