Bill Cosby unlikely to face charges due to sex abuse claims

(UPDATE)  About 20 women have come forward to accuse veteran US comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault and even rape.

With the said attacks that happened more than 10 years ago, the comedian is unlikely to face criminal charges due to statutes of limitations.

The following is a look at the claims against Bill Cosby, and the legal parameters surrounding them:

Different US states, different laws

The allegations against Bill date back to the 1960s, and the encounters took place in several US states including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California.

In America, laws vary from state to state in terms of the gravity of the crime, the burden of proof, the length of the statutes of limitations and the possible punishments.

An act of rape “by forcible compulsion” in New York can be considered to be an “illegal sexual relationship” in California, and thus the punishment is less severe.

Too late for criminal charges

Most of the allegations go back to the 1970s and 1980s. In the states involved, the statutes of limitations bar charges from being brought, except in Pennsylvania, where an alleged victim has 12 years to file a criminal complaint.

In the East Coast state, Andrea Constand, former director of operations of the women’s basketball team at Temple University, has accused Bill of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 2004.

A year later, prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against Bill, citing lack of evidence. Constand then filed a civil complaint accusing Bill of battery and assault.

No chance for civil suits

With respect to possible civil suits against Bill, the statutes of limitations have expired everywhere.

However in late 2006, the comic reached an out-of-court settlement with Constand, the terms of which were never disclosed.

Constand had asked for $150,000 in damages plus interest, arguing that Cosby’s alleged behavior had caused her to “suffer severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment and financial loss.”

If Cosby made any admission in that civil case that could work against him attorney Stuart Slotnick told Agence France-Presse.

But as this case involves a public figure, it is more likely that Bill simply paid the money to avoid publicity.

In that event, the only thing prosecutors could use is that “he paid money to make a case go away, but that’s not evidence he did it.”

High burden of proof

On the criminal side, no matter what the state, “the legal standard to prove the crime is actually the same everywhere, and that’s ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ and that’s a very high standard,” said Slotnick.

That is why the then district attorney in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County, Bruce Castor, chose not to charge Cosby in 2005.

“I didn’t say that he didn’t commit the crime,” Castor told NBC Philadelphia.

“What I said was there was insufficient admissible and reliable evidence upon which to base a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s ‘prosecutors speak’ for ‘I think he did it, but there’s just not enough here to prosecute.’”

No more physical evidence

“Criminal cases don’t get better with age – they usually get worse,” said Slotnick. It is difficult, if not impossible, to gather physical evidence and testimony 10 or 20 years after the fact.

Even for the most recent case concerning Bill, it is too late to gather any physical evidence that would prove rape or the presence of drugs in the woman’s system.

“You lose the ability to test for blood or intoxicating agents, whether she was drugged,” said Slotnick.

“Years later, the kind of evidence that prosecutors would be able to collect would be the women’s testimony,” the New York-based attorney said.

“That makes it difficult for a jury, especially when a woman comes forward 10 years later, because that automatically raises questions for the jurors: why did they wait? When there’s someone who is a celebrity, there’s always the question: do they seek to profit from the criminal prosecution?”

That is the main argument put forward by lawyers for Cosby. The comedian himself has largely stayed quiet, only saying to a Florida newspaper that “a guy doesn’t have to answer to innuendos.”

 

Bill Cosby accused of Sexual Assault

Veteran comedian Bill Cosby faces charges of sexual assault filed by TV personality and model, Janice Dickinson.

According to Janice, she was raped by the comedian in the year 1982.

The TV personality and model recalled what happened to her and narrated it to Entertainment Tonight.

Janice said that Bill invited her to Lake Tahoe, California, to discuss with her about a possibility of a job offer and to help her with her singing career. They started talking during dinner; Janice remembered that she even asked for a pill from Bill, to help ease her stomach pain due to menstrual cramp.

“The next morning I woke up, and I wasn’t wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,” Janice said.

“Before I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain. The next morning I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs” she added.

Janice also shared that keeping the alleged sexual assault a secret for 32 years brought so much pain in her life.

“Stuffing feelings of rape and my unresolved issues with this incident has driven me into a life of trying to hurt myself because I didn’t have counsel and I was afraid, I was afraid of the consequences. I was afraid of being labeled a whore or a slut and trying to sleep my way to the top of a career that never took place” Janice uttered.

In her 2002 autobiography ‘No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel’, Janice said that she tried to write about the assault, but according to her when she submitted a draft with her full story to HarperCollins, a publishing company in the U.S., Bill Cosby and his lawyers pressured her and the publisher to remove the details.

Bill Cosby’s lawyer, Marty Singer, issued a statement regarding Janice’s accusations:

“Janice Dickinson’s story accusing Bill Cosby of rape is a lie. There is a glaring contradiction between what she is claiming now for the first time and what she wrote in her own book and what she told the media back in 2002. Ms. Dickinson did an interview with the New York Observer in September 2002 entitled “Interview With a Vamp” completely contradicting her new story about Mr. Cosby. That interview a dozen years ago said “she didn’t want to go to bed with him and he blew her off.” Her publisher Harper Collins can confirm that no attorney representing Mr. Cosby tried to kill the alleged rape story (since there was no such story) or tried to prevent her from saying whatever she wanted about Bill Cosby in her book. The only story she gave 12 years ago to the media and in her autobiography was that she refused to sleep with Mr. Cosby and he blew her off. Documentary proof and Ms. Dickinson’s own words show that her new story about something she now claims happened back in 1982 is a fabricated lie.”

 

 

(Photo Source: Bill Cosby’s Official Website)