Cosby wants other accusers to take competency, memory tests

[webfact]

Cosby wants other accusers to take competency, memory tests

By MARYCLAIRE DALE

 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bill Cosby's lawyers accused prosecutors Monday of trying to use the "tainted, unreliable memories of women, now in their senior years" to build their sexual assault case against him and will seek competency hearings on any accusers allowed to testify.

 

Prosecutors hope to have 13 of about 60 known accusers testify to show a pattern of "prior bad acts" when Cosby, now 79 and blind, goes on trial next summer on charges of drugging and molesting a former Temple University employee in 2004. Courts can allow the testimony if it shows a very specific "signature" crime pattern.

 

On the eve of a key pretrial hearing Tuesday, Cosby's lawyers said the women's memories have been marred by time, media coverage of the case and their friendship with one another. After a memory expert reviewed the women's statements for the defense, the lawyers dismiss the other accounts as "stories of that night spent partying with a famous celebrity."

 

The two sides will face off in court for two days to determine what evidence can be used at the entertainer's scheduled felony trial in June.

 

"Because Mr. Cosby was never charged, let alone convicted, the jury could be tempted to convict him in this case simply to punish him for the other incidents which are now nothing more than vague recollections," defense lawyers Brian McMonagle and Angela Agrusa wrote in their filing Monday.

 

The defense said the accounts range from rape to other sex acts to fondling. And they said some of the women took drugs or alcohol knowingly, while others say they did not. Prosecutors argue that the drinks, even if taken knowingly, were also laced with drugs that knocked the women out and left them unable to give consent.

 

Some of the accusers don't even know what year they met Cosby, and many of them knew Cosby before the former Temple employee, Andrea Constand, was even born, they wrote. Cosby's memory is also fading, they said, to the point he could not answer 90 questions in a civil deposition last year.

 

Cosby has pleaded not guilty and argues that he can't defend himself against vague accusations that stretch back to the 1960s.

 

At least four of the women "did not realize that they were victims until they heard the accusations of other women in the media," according to Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, the defense psychologist who studies human memory. Her preliminary findings were excerpted in the brief.

 

Prosecutors in suburban Philadelphia say Cosby, a Temple alumnus and longtime booster, routinely used his fame and power to befriend impressionable young women, knocked them out with drugs or alcohol and then sexually assaulted them.

 

The testimony of the 13 others — should Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill allow some or all of it — could bolster a case that turns on the question of consent. Cosby, in a decade-old deposition, acknowledged some of the encounters but said they were consensual. Prosecutors will also push to use the deposition at trial. The hearing is expected to run through Wednesday, with another pretrial hearing on the evidence set for December.

 

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they are sexual assault victims. However, Constand has given consent through her lawyer.

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-11-01

[performance]

Why is he still aive

[elgordo38]

Tearing out a page from The Donald's playbook. 

[tandor]

6 hours ago, performance said:

Why is he still aive

 

...i hope his hearing goes next...then he will be in the darkness all alone...exactly where he put his victims for so many years.

Edited November 1, 2016 by metisdead
Bold font removed.

[ddavidovsky]

Extrapolating from all I know about humanity, Cosby was a big star who was full of himself and took some liberties at a time when that's what famous, full-of-themselves people did when surrounded by their adoring fans.

 

A bunch of women have now have leaped on the media-driven outrage bandwagon and are using him as a scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in their lives since. If what he did was so bad, they should have taken legal action at the time, which was long ago. They didn't. They forfeit.

 

Psychologists know that nobody's recollection of things that happened long ago can be trusted. Chuck these ridiculous cases out.

[amykat]

15 hours ago, ddavidovsky said:

Extrapolating from all I know about humanity, Cosby was a big star who was full of himself and took some liberties at a time when that's what famous, full-of-themselves people did when surrounded by their adoring fans.

 

Really, how many stars have we heard about who needed to drug girls and women in order to have sex with them?  In fact, this should be quite the opposite.  Do you think Mick Jagger has ever needed to drug women in order to have a nice selection of people to sleep with? The fact that he has done this to so many women indicates that he has some kind attraction to sex with women who cannot consent (a form of rape), so maybe we could just call this rape and not even sex per se?  As rape is supposed to be some kind of act of power/control against women.  So he has sex with his wife and maybe some other people, and this other thing with other people to supply this need of his.

 

 

15 hours ago, ddavidovsky said:

 

A bunch of women have now have leaped on the media-driven outrage bandwagon and are using him as a scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in their lives since. If what he did was so bad, they should have taken legal action at the time, which was long ago. They didn't. They forfeit.

 

Psychologists know that nobody's recollection of things that happened long ago can be trusted. Chuck these ridiculous cases out.

 

I don't know who all the woman are, either do you.  Some of the woman I do know who they are.  They seem to be pretty successful people, who are well off, attractive, well spoken, poised, have nice families, etc.  But even if they aren't, they are capable of having had something bad happen to them in the past, and the perp should be liable for it.  Good thing you don't make the rules because they haven't forfeited their rights to take legal action.

 

I love the way some of you men can just jump on your bandwagon for a man you have never met, assume 60 women are all lying scum, etc.  Surely you think all the women against Trump are liars too right?  And every woman who claims she was raped, either deserved it or is lying?  And every woman who was sexually harassed at work over the last 100 years, was full of it, right?  And sexism doesn't exist?  And you aren't biased?

 

[ddavidovsky]

1 hour ago, amykat said:

I love the way some of you men can just jump on your bandwagon for a man you have never met, assume 60 women are all lying scum, etc.  Surely you think all the women against Trump are liars too right?  And every woman who claims she was raped, either deserved it or is lying?  And every woman who was sexually harassed at work over the last 100 years, was full of it, right?  And sexism doesn't exist?  And you aren't biased?

 

 

Impassioned hyperbole only undermines the credibility of cases such as these - and your own credibility. Nobody is saying rape or sexual harrassment doesn't exist.

 

Fame has a mesmerising effect on people. The drugs were for relaxation. But the  main point is that these events happened so long ago that memory cannot be trusted, especially in the current climate of popular outrage over every little thing. Outrage distorts reason, and today's fashionable outrage over sexual issues now borders on hysteria. The law should recognise that.

 

If anyone has a complaint to make, especially on something that cannot be proven but is just one person's word against someone else's, they shouldn't wait decades to make it. Case dismissed.

Edited November 2, 2016 by ddavidovsky

[amykat]

ddavidovsky,

 

Every statement you made above is fallacious, in the context of this discussion, for reasons that every intelligent person can easily see.

 

Let me just ask you a question?  Can you remember losing your virginity?  How many years ago was that?

 

Can you also remember the first time you tried .....fill in the blanks .....a hooker, a ladyboy, a threesome, your first love, whatever?

 

Can you remember that time you were mugged, had a car accident, was late for your flight and got stuck for 3 days in Mexico?

 

I will just leave it there.

 

 

[ddavidovsky]

4 hours ago, amykat said:

ddavidovsky,

 

Every statement you made above is fallacious, in the context of this discussion, for reasons that every intelligent person can easily see.

 

Let me just ask you a question?  Can you remember losing your virginity?  How many years ago was that?

 

Can you also remember the first time you tried .....fill in the blanks .....a hooker, a ladyboy, a threesome, your first love, whatever?

 

Can you remember that time you were mugged, had a car accident, was late for your flight and got stuck for 3 days in Mexico?

 

I will just leave it there.

 

 

 

Your point is that one should be able to remember things like that? I honestly can't remember any of those events (that I've experienced) in much detail, other than that they happened, but they probably didn't happen the way I thought they did - and the other person's perspective would surely be quite different. The nuance is certainly lost, and some of those events I am certainly prone to distort in my memory - I know that for a fact when I compare my memories to old diaries. People are apt to distort even recent memories - that's psychologically proven, especially emotionally frail people. The fallibility of memory is the issue. Nothing fallacious about that.

 

The law is obtuse regarding sexual matters. When it comes to getting it on, nuance is everything. A suggestive look, a word, a bit of body language can change everything - everyone knows that. To judge Cosby's case, you would have to have been there in the room and witnessed the whole thing and all that led up to it and afterwards - understand the whole thing in context.

 

One can't rake up the past and litigate over every offence going back decades. I could identify all sorts of distressing things that have happened to me that have had life-altering or psychologically damaging consequences. I'm not going to sue everyone over it, as much as I might like to. These people haven't had their lives ruined. They just have over-zealous lawyers.

 

Everything I'm saying is empirically verifiable. My background is in psychology.

Edited November 2, 2016 by ddavidovsky

[amykat]

9 hours ago, ddavidovsky said:

 

 I could identify all sorts of distressing things that have happened to me that have had life-altering or psychologically damaging consequences. I'm not going to sue everyone over it, as much as I might like to. These people haven't had their lives ruined. They just have over-zealous lawyers.

 

Everything I'm saying is empirically verifiable. My background is in psychology.

 

The issue isn't if they have had their lives ruined or their feelings hurt. In theory they could have enjoyed the event.  The ISSUE is that Cosby broke the law by NOT getting consent by purposely drugging them without their knowledge. It is most important when dealing with the law, to properly identify the ISSUES.  By not doing that, all your arguments become fallacious.

[ddavidovsky]

2 hours ago, amykat said:

 

The issue isn't if they have had their lives ruined or their feelings hurt. In theory they could have enjoyed the event.  The ISSUE is that Cosby broke the law by NOT getting consent by purposely drugging them without their knowledge. It is most important when dealing with the law, to properly identify the ISSUES.  By not doing that, all your arguments become fallacious.

 

The issue is that the law is currently an ass. It allows unprovable and potentially spurious claims by outrage-driven sympathy-seeking people (such is modern society) decades after the event, when mores have changed and memory is fallible, in a nuanced area of human behaviour, where it's simply one person's word against another's.

Edited November 3, 2016 by ddavidovsky