Bill Cosby, the American comedian, who fell from grace with many other talented men in the entertainment industry in 2017, is facing a retrial in the charges brought against him by a Canadian woman.
He is charged with drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
The first trial ended in a mistrial in June, as the jury could not decide unanimously.
Andrea Constand walks her dogs in Toronto in this Dec. 30, 2015 file photo. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
Constand, from Toronto, was a basketball scholarship student at the University of Arizona in the United States.
Eventually she moved to Cosby’s alma mater, Temple University in Philadelphia, as the director of operations for the women’s basketball team.
It was in this position she became friends with Cosby who was also a former basketball star, and an active supporter of Temple.
On the evening she accepted an invitation from Cosby, now 80, to get together to “discuss her career”, Constand remembers getting drowsy, and feeling “dizzy” and Cosby allegedly helping her to lie down on a couch.
Then she remembers waking up around 4 am, realising her clothes and underwear were “in disarray”.
When the details Cosby revealed of the evening did not quite jive with the more limited version that Constand could remember, investigators decided to proceed with a trial.
“We really have had this explosion of awareness since that last trial, and it has changed the entire environment,” Richard Gabriel, a jury consultant who has worked on over 1,000 trials told the Associated Press.
“It is a huge challenge for the defence, but it could also provide an avenue and open up the topic.”
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