NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ Prosecutors on Tuesday barreled toward the conclusion of their case against Bill Cosby, mapping out plans to present testimony from a series of investigators and Cosby's own words about his 2004 sexual encounter with the case's chief accuser, Andrea Constand.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele told the court that he expected to call his final witnesses to the stand sometime Tuesday afternoon or early Wednesday.
"We're almost finished here," he told Judge Steven T. O'Neill, as he ticked off a list of individuals whose testimony he still intends to present.
That list included a lawyer for Constand, as well as a forensic drug expert to discuss the three blue pills Constand says Cosby gave her the night of her alleged assault at his Cheltenham home. Much of the testimony that remains is similar to what prosecutors presented during Cosby's first trial, which ended in a hung jury last June.
Tuesday morning brought to the witness stand Cheltenham Police Sgt. Richard Schaffer, the detective who investigated the case when Constand came forward in 2005.
That probe did not result in charges against Cosby. Schaffer told jurors that he was not consulted or informed before then-District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. announced plans to shut down the investigation a month after it had begun.
Castor's successor reopened the case in 2015, and Schaffer was involved once again. The detective testified Tuesday that he believed Constand's story a decade ago just as he believes her now.
"She seemed a little nervous _ a little anxious," he said of his first phone call with Constand 13 years ago. "It was almost as if she wanted to get a lot of information out at one time."
Cosby also agreed to speak with police during the first investigation. In a 2005 interview with detectives, the comedy icon insisted his sexual contact with Constand was consensual and expressed concern that Constand would use her allegations to embarrass or extort him.
"I never intended to have sexual intercourse, like naked bodies, with Andrea," Cosby told police, according to his 2005 police statement. "We are fully clothed, we are petting. I enjoyed it. And then I stopped and went to bed."
Later in the interview, detectives again asked whether he had ever had sex with Constand.
Cosby replied: "Never asleep or awake."
That statement _ and testimony Cosby later would give in a 2005 deposition for a lawsuit Constand filed against him _ are most likely the only times that jurors will hear the entertainer's side of the story in his own words. Cosby did not testify during his first trial in June and is not expected to make a different choice this time around.
Earlier Tuesday, O'Neill ruled that jurors could be shown excerpts of Cosby's testimony from that deposition, in which he discussed his past use of Quaaludes in sexual encounters with women.
Cosby said under oath at the time that he had obtained the popular '70s party drug to use as a mood enhancer in consensual sexual liaisons.
O'Neill had allowed those statements to be introduced during the first trial but had reconsidered the issue at the request of Cosby's new defense team.
"It just has no bearing on his knowledge of the drugs that were at issue in 2004 with Ms. Constand," Cosby lawyer Becky S. James argued. "There's just no connection."
Prosecutors have never alleged that the three blue pills Cosby gave her that night were Quaaludes, but argued that his admissions regarding the drug show his propensity to use depressants in sexual encounters.
"There's only one person in the room that knows what Ms. Constand ingested that evening," Assistant District Attorney M. Stuart Ryan said.
