Most people have heard about the mess that beloved comedian Bill Cosby has found himself in within the past year or so. But a new development has Cosby and his lawyer lashing out not only at the court system, but at the media as well.
A court reporter released a deposition from a 2005 case involving one of his accusers, and Cosby says that the contents of the deposition are being misinterpreted thanks to recent events.
Cosby and his lawyer, Patrick O’Connor, have since filed a lawsuit, saying that the deposition shouldn’t have been released, and that it skews the rest of his cases. The deposition is about a woman who said that Cosby drugged her and later sexually assaulted her. Also in the deposition, Cosby does admit that he was sexually involved with no fewer than five women outside of his marriage. He also admitted that he slipped sedatives to the women he wanted to sleep with, while attempting to hide the affairs from his wife.
The deposition is from a court case involving Andrea Constand, the first Cosby accuser. In this case, she claims that she was drugged and taken to his home in 2004, where she was sexually assaulted. After speaking with authorities in January 2005, she reached a settlement in 2006. The case had remained closed until more than 20 other women stepped forward with similar claims.
Though Cosby maintains that he did not commit these crimes, and has not been formally charged with any crime, the media has assured his public destruction. After the release of the 2005 deposition, his lawyers have come forward, saying that Constand and her lawyers are “trying to ride on the coattails of the barrage of inaccurate and negative media attention.”
On July 6, there was a ruling that pieces of the deposition that related to Constand’s lawsuit were to be released. A court reporter, however, released the entire thing. Court reporters are responsible for transcribing 225 testimony words, 200 jury charge words, and 180 literary words per minute with 95% accuracy. This court reporter in particular was involved in the entire 2005 case.
Cosby and his team are maintaining that he is innocent, and that the release of these documents is simply Constand and her lawyers trying to continue their crusade against him in the public eye. They also claim that pieces of the case are being taken out of context to fit the media narrative of Cosby’s actions.
“The litigants to the lawsuit (in this case, Constand) could be held in contempt of court for releasing the documents in violation of the courts confidentiality order,” said Paul Callan, a former media law professor at Seton Hall University. “However once the documents have been placed in the public domain, the press has every right to publish (them) given the level of public interest in any matter of public controversy.”