--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A quick note about Quip electric toothbrushes before we get started with the show. They're sleek. They're quiet. They give you these little pulses to let you know when to switch brushing quadrants. Go to getquip.com slash explain to learn more.
--:-- [Discussion continues, but no clear speaker is identified]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today is the fourth day of Bill Cosby's retrial in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Women who say Bill Cosby knocked them out with intoxicants and sexually abused them decades ago are finally getting a chance to confront the entertainer.
--:-- [Discussion continues, but no clear speaker is identified]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The allegations stem from a 2004 incident involving Andrea Constant. And she says in 2004, she went to Cosby's home, which is in a suburb of Philadelphia, and he gave her pills, drugged her and sexually assaulted her.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Cosby faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Cosby maintains the relationship was consensual. So last year in June, the first trial ended in a hung jury. So they declared a mistrial. The jury couldn't reach a verdict.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The prosecution immediately said, we're going to retry this case. And a year later, here we are. There's a mountain of allegations against Bill Cosby. But why was the jury unable to come to a guilty verdict? You know, it's hard to say. But basically, they just couldn't agree that Cosby was guilty.
--:-- Jen Kirby: A couple of reports said there were two jurors that were hung up. But it seems to be that those jurors who were outstanding doubted Constance's testimony that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cosby has claimed that the encounter was consensual. Not all the jurors spoke out, so it's hard to know exactly what happened in the jury room. But they couldn't reach a verdict after almost a week of deliberations.
--:-- Jen Kirby: If I know anything from my law and order days, it's that the prosecution will not retry a case unless it's pretty confident it can get the verdict it wants. So what's the prosecution doing differently this time around?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this case is a little bit different. More than 60 women have accused Cosby of some form of sexual misconduct. Most of them say that he drugged them or attempted to drug them and either sexually assaulted them or attempted to.
--:-- Jen Kirby: So the prosecutors want to get some of this evidence into the court. They asked if they could put 19 women on the stand. The judge said, you can put five, and he gave them a pool of eight women that they could choose from.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the first trial, only one other woman, one other accuser who had similar allegations, was able to testify.
--:-- Jen Kirby: What was the defense's major strategy last time, and how might it be different this time around?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One, they kind of came out and said, this is Bill Cosby. He's America's dad, and don't you remember him on your television screens? And sort of trying to relive the glory days, I guess.
--:-- Jen Kirby: In the opening statement, the defense this time around really put down a stake that Constant is an opportunist and is after fame and is after money.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The judge has let in some different evidence. He's bringing in information about a civil settlement that was settled in 2006 between Andrea Constant and Bill Cosby.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Just to backtrack a little bit, this incident that Cosby's on trial for took place in 2004, according to Andrea Constant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: About a year later, she went to police and said, this happened to me. She gave them her testimony that she went to Cosby's house, that he gave her pills. She became incapacitated and he sexually assaulted her.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Police spoke to Cosby. Cosby said, I gave her Benadryl. We did some heavy petting and it was consensual.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The prosecution in 2005 declined to bring charges.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Constant went ahead with a civil suit. They ended up settling that out of court in 2006. And that settlement, the amount of money that she received, has never been disclosed until this week at trial.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how much was it? $3.38 million.
--:-- Jen Kirby: The defense is trying to say, this woman, Andrea Constant, she was after money. The prosecution is trying to flip it as well and say listen Andrea Constant went to police in 2005 They declined to prosecute Cosby She pursued a civil suit She hasn't talked about it. She never has spoken publicly until she testified in court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The lead attorney, Tom Mesereau, called her a con artist who tried to extort his famous client. Her motivation, he said, was, quote, money, money and lots more money.
--:-- Jen Kirby: In 2006, Constan received nearly $3.4 million in a civil suit settlement with Cosby.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, you're also hoping that people say $3.38 million, that's a lot of money. Why pay that if you're innocent?
--:-- Jen Kirby: So it can kind of go both ways in this trial, but that's sort of a huge reason why this trial is different than the first.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have a witness who worked with Constant at Temple University who is going to testify that Constant said that she would make up a claim so that she could get money out of Cosby.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Yes, Margo Jackson. She wasn't allowed to testify in the first trial. She's allowed to testify now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that kind of a thing can change how you present your case.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And on the prosecution side, other women are testifying, right? It's not just Andrea Kahn's stand up there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Four of the five women who the prosecution is going to call to testify have taken the stand and told their stories.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And they've said some pretty dramatic things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's been intense to hear the reports coming out of the courtroom.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Late this afternoon, the prosecution called Heidi Thomas, one of the five additional accusers allowed to testify.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She claims that he gave her a sip of wine or a glass of wine. She took a sip and then fell unconscious.
--:-- Jen Kirby: At that point, she says sometime later, she awoke to him forcing himself on her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Baker Kinney says at the time people didn't talk about date rape and that few would be believed, but maintains Cosby drugged her and sexually assaulted her in the early 80s.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Shalon Leisha was in tears when she testified that Bill Cosby molested her when she was 17 years old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Leisha said Cosby gave her two blue pills and some alcohol when she told him she had a cold.
--:-- Jen Kirby: She remembered not being able to move and Cosby touching her breast and rubbing himself against her leg.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As the judge called for a lunch recess, Leisha stared in Cosby's direction and said, quote, You remember, don't you, Mr. Cosby?
--:-- Jen Kirby: Bill Cosby's 80 years old. I think he's legally blind.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If he's found guilty, will they actually send him away to prison for the rest of his life? Like, what kind of consequences is he actually facing?
--:-- Jen Kirby: He's charged with three counts of aggravated, indecent assault. Each charge carries up to 10 years in prison.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's probably unlikely he'd get that much, but he definitely could spend the rest of his life in prison if he's convicted.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Is there any scenario in which the prosecution, if he gets off on this one too, might try him again?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are they just going to keep doing this until they get him?
--:-- Jen Kirby: It would be shocking if the prosecution tried him a third time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If this ends up in a mistrial, Cosby will essentially have been found not guilty.
--:-- Jen Kirby: I would find it really, really surprising that the prosecution would pour more resources and more time into this if they just can't get a verdict.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The bottom line is, this is still a he said, she said. There's no DNA evidence. The allegation is more than 10 years old.
--:-- Jen Kirby: These kinds of things do matter, and it's hard in general to get a conviction in these types of cases.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just doesn't seem likely that the prosecution would take that risk again.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Okay. I'm not a betting woman, so I'm not going to say yes or no, but I don't think it's likely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The biggest difference between Cosby's first trial last year and this one that just started is the Me Too movement.
--:-- Jen Kirby: So will that be a game changer?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's after the break.
--:-- [Discussion continues with Laura McGann]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome back to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram, and we're talking about Bill Cosby's retrial.
--:-- Laura McGann: I'm Laura McGann, the politics editor at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen Kirby's been covering the case for us, and now we're going to dive deeper into what this trial means in the context of the Me Too movement.
--:-- Laura McGann: So, to start, can you tell us a bit about the Me Too movement and how it's changed the way we think about these kinds of cases?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I'd love to hear your take on that.
--:-- Laura McGann: So, the Me Too movement was all about women speaking out about their own experiences of sexual harassment and assault.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was a huge shift, because before that, it was often just he said, she said.
--:-- Laura McGann: Exactly. And the Me Too movement helped to create a sense that this was a huge problem, that it wasn't just one or two women, but many, many women who had experienced this kind of behavior.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's what's so interesting about this trial, because it's not just one woman accusing Cosby, but five other women who are testifying against him.
--:-- Laura McGann: That's right. And the prosecution is presenting them as corroborating evidence to lend credibility to the accuser in the case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does it take that many witnesses, that many maybe victims to actually corroborate the sexual misdeeds of a man post-MeToo or pre-MeToo?
--:-- Laura McGann: I think that's a really good question. The first challenge or problem Me Too was confronting was women being believed and the public at large believing that this is a huge problem sexual assault sexual harassment affects a lot of women that the startling statistics are actually real and they're true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What sort of happened was this, it's not he said, she said, it's he said, she said, she said, she said, she said, in a sort of global sense that this is about a lot of women.
--:-- Laura McGann: And then we saw that starting to be applied in these high-profile cases around, I think Harvey Weinstein is probably the most prominent, but we saw it with Roger Ailes and others, that it was a pattern of behavior.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the reason those stories were so compelling is because these men appeared so predatory and it built a case around them that this isn't one woman. It's a lot of women describing things that they all experienced independent of each other.
--:-- Laura McGann: And that made a lot of sense in the early moments of Me Too. The big challenge now I feel with Me Too is both helping the public understand that this is a huge problem on a huge scale, but without discrediting any single woman.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That if you're the victim of a crime, you are entitled to justice, you're entitled to a safe work environment, and you shouldn't have to be expected to round up all these other victims to prove your own case.
--:-- Laura McGann: And that's something I think we're starting to see around, in particular, this Bill Cosby case, that the way the prosecution is retrying this case is by boosting the credibility of one woman with the stories of other women.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it does. It starts to then raise this question of how many women equal one man? Is it three? Is that a trend?
--:-- Laura McGann: I think that that is the next big question for Me Too, which is how do you maintain the significance of any one individual in something that's become such a collective movement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've seen a lot of men sort of step away from their media, popular culture empires, Louis C.K., Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Russell Simmons, but not a lot of charges being made, not a lot of criminal follow-up, let's say.
--:-- Laura McGann: Might this be the first one to sort of change that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think Larry Nassar comes to mind as someone who actually was convicted of crimes. But I mean, it was like 5,000 women testifying against him.
--:-- Laura McGann: Is the Cosby trial the first time we might see someone who's going to be convicted for the sorts of things that we're seeing broadly in the Me Too movement?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that the Bill Cosby trial is significant because it's saying these are not just bad things to do. These actions are criminal.
--:-- Laura McGann: We've seen with a lot of these cases, like the men that you just mentioned, they sort of end up in what I call Me Too jail. It's not jail, people. It's just a guy who is very rich, doesn't get to stand on a stage. Right. Star in a movie. His book deal gets suspended.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if he's found not guilty, does that shift how we see punishment for these crimes?
--:-- Laura McGann: And are we going to say that if you're publicly shamed for a little while and you disappear for a while, that's good enough, that that satisfies justice, that Me Too jail is good enough?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening to the show, and thanks again to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for all their support.
--:-- Laura McGann: You can learn more about Quip and their quiet, dentist-approved, well-designed electric toothbrushes at getquip.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Laura McGann: I'm Laura McGann, the politics editor at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Laura McGann: Thanks for listening to the show, and thanks again to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for all their support.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can learn more about Quip and their quiet, dentist-approved, well-designed electric toothbrushes at getquip.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Laura McGann: I'm Laura McGann, the politics editor at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Laura McGann: Thanks for listening to the show, and thanks again to Quip Electric Toothbrushes for all their support.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can learn more about Quip and their quiet, dentist-approved, well-designed electric toothbrushes at getquip.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Laura McGann: I'm Laura McGann, the politics editor at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you know that your mouth can be divided into four quadrants?
--:-- Laura McGann: How do I know it's four? Because of the word quadrants. Quad. Sounds pretty sci-fi to me, like in those sci-fi shows where they're attacking this quadrant and that quadrant from a spaceship in outer space.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know what reminds me of spaceships? Quip electric toothbrushes.
--:-- Laura McGann: Because the other thing about spaceships is they're super silent in the vacuum of space. Quip toothbrushes are quiet too. Like, so quiet you'll be wondering if they're even on. but they are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Use your spaceship toothbrush to attack the plaque in the four quadrants of your inner mouth.
--:-- Laura McGann: Go to getquip.com slash explain to learn more about an out-of-this-world experience. You'll also discover your first set of refill brush heads will be free. getquip.com slash explain.
