NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ Bill Cosby's lawyers likened the legal woes and sex scandals that have dogged their client for years to "witch hunts" and "lynchings" and urged jurors Tuesday to reject Andrea Constand's claims that she was one of the comedy icon's final victims.
Delivering a final pitch to the jury, attorney Kathleen Bliss confronted head-on the shadow of the #MeToo movement that has loomed large over Cosby's retrial on sexual assault charges.
"We do have to deal with sexual assault ... just like we have to deal with sexual harassment, just like we have to deal with pay disparity, just like we have to deal with social inequalities," Bliss told the panel of seven men and five women hearing the case. "But questioning an accuser is not shaming a victim. Gut feelings are not rational decisions. Mob rule is not due process."
She continued: "When you join a movement based primarily on emotion and anger, you don't change a damn thing."
Her closing argument _ followed by a second closing speech by Cosby lawyer Tom Mesereau _ concluded a four-day defense that has fought to discredit Constand as a "con artist" who badly damaged her credibility with conflicting statements to police. Defense lawyers have alleged she set out to entrap Cosby with false abuse claims so she could extort him for the $3.4 million Cosby later paid her to settle a lawsuit she filed against him.
"I call it one of the biggest highway robberies of all times," Mesereau said Tuesday. "Bill Cosby got conned, big time."
Bliss, too, dismissed the five other women who have testified against her 80-year-old client, calling them "failed starlets" and fame-mongers, each of whom concocted abuse claims for a chance at money or attention.
"What is this case about?" Bliss asked. "It's about money, press conferences, TV shows, salacious coverage, ratings. Sex sells."
Throughout Tuesday's proceeding, Cosby's wife, Camille, sat in the gallery's front row, her eyes shielded behind a pair of chunky sunglasses. Before the day's arguments began, Camille Cosby was escorted into the courtroom on the arm of Cosby's publicist Andrew Wyatt, making her first appearance at Cosby's retrial. With a beaming smile on her face, she was conspicuously led to the front of the courtroom, where she gave her husband two quick kisses, before being led to her seat.
Unlike at the first trial, Constand _ who has claimed Cosby drugged and assaulted her at his Cheltenham mansion in 2004 _ was not in the courtroom during closing arguments. Her lawyers, Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz, sat alongside attorneys and staff of the district attorney's office.
Prosecutors were expected to deliver their own final salvo and the jury was to begin deliberating later Tuesday.
But Mesereau, in his speech, wasted little time dismissing both Constand and prosecutors, describing her as "a pathological liar" and the government case as one built on "flimsy, silly, ridiculous evidence."
He repeatedly stressed a prior prosecutor's decision not to charge Cosby based on Constand's allegations when she came forward in 2005, and presented a complex defense theory that he and his colleagues have built over the final two days of trial.
"There is not a single day between Dec. 30, 2003, and Jan. 31, 2004, when this incident could have occurred," Mesereau said, highlighting travel and phone records and appearance schedules that the defense has seized upon as proof that Constand's alleged assault could not have occurred when she said it did.
Those dates matter because prosecutors charged Cosby in December 2015, just days before the state's 12-year statute of limitations on the purported January 2004 assault was set to expire.
If a sexual encounter occurred earlier than Constand told police, jurors could not convict him even if they believed he was guilty of assault. Cosby has admitted to having a sexual liaison with Constand but insists it was consensual.
"Why did this thing get filed at the last minute?" Mesereau asked. "They can't give you one ounce of evidence that anything happened in January 2004."
Cosby sat quietly Tuesday facing the jury box as his lawyers pleaded his case. The jurors, who have been sequestered at a nearby hotel since the start of the trial April 9, listened attentively.
Although the case soon will be in the jury's hands, it still could take days for the panel to reach a verdict.
During Cosby's first trial in June, jurors deliberated for 52 hours over a week and still ultimately were unable to reach a unanimous decision, prompting Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill to declare a mistrial.
Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault _ each of which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
