Jury convicts Bill Cosby of rape after 9-minute deliberation
NORRISTOWN, Pa. -- A jury has unanimously convicted Bill Cosby - one of the world's most prolific, privileged and venerated rapists - on three counts of sexual assault following a 9-minute deliberation.
Cosby shook his head as the former read out the guilty verdict, then blamed his conviction on the four black people who served on the jury, saying he did not respect the way they wore their pants, according to the disgraced actress Keshia Knight Pulliam. (25 years ago, Pulliam played Cosby's youngest daughter, Rudy Huxtable, on "The Cosby Show," a role Cosby paid her $3,000 a day to perform throughout the trial with a $2,000 cash bonus for thoroughly betraying her gender.)
Across America, millions of women celebrated the verdict as further proof that patriarchy is in decline. "Between Roger Ailes' death and President Hillary Rodham Clinton's winning the election by 3 million votes, we think it's a pretty good time to be a woman in America," said Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill and Gloria Allred in a jubilant joint press release.
In interviews outside the courtroom, the jury foreman Marcia Davenport told reporters that it had been "incredibly easy for us to reach a verdict because we listened to Constand, who testified that he drugged and assaulted her in his home in 2004."
"We are a nation that believes women," she told the Los Angeles Times. "He's a powerful man, and his whole defense boiled down to his lawyers' saying that she was 'asking for it.' Of course he did it! He's guilty as hell!"
Judge Steve T. O’Neill scheduled sentencing to take place in three weeks. Cosby, 79, faces up to 30 years in prison, and Montgomery County District Attorney, Kevin R. Steele, said he expects Cosby to receive "the maximum possible sentence given that the other 6,700 women who Cosby has raped have no way of getting justice thanks to sexist statute of limitations laws."
Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Netflix is producing a 6-part documentary based on the life of Andrea Constand. The project is tentatively entitled, "True American Hero."
