Andrea Constand once said she could fabricate sexual assault claims against a celebrity for financial gain, a key defense witness testified last Wednesday in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial. Jurors will hear back the entire testimony of Marguerite “Margo” Jackson, an employee of Temple University for over 30-years, to compare her testimony to Constand’s.
They will hear the entire testimony of Margo Jackson, including direct, cross, redirect, recross after they eat dinner.
Marguerite Jackson, who worked at Temple University with Constand, told jurors in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania that the two shared a room during a basketball trip to Rhode Island in February 2004. While watching a news report about a celebrity accused of drugging and sexually assaulting someone, Constand said “something similar happened to me,” said Jackson, one of several defense witnesses.
Marguerite Jackson, a key defensive witness, walks into courtroom A after a break in the Bill Cosby sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Wednesday, April 18, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine, Pool)
“I was like, ‘Really, who? When?” Jackson recounted. “She said ‘she wasn’t going to say,’ and I said, ‘Did you report it?'” Constand said she did not report the claim “because I couldn’t prove it,” according to Jackson.
After Jackson asked her if it was true a third time, Constand said it was not but she could say it was. “I could file a civil suit, get that money, quit my job, go back to school, and start a business,” Constand said, according to Jackson.
The case against Cosby centers on testimony from Andrea Constand, a former employee with Temple University women’s basketball team. Cosby’s defense team has argued that their interaction was consensual. Constand is a con artist, they argued, who wanted a piece of Cosby’s fortune.
Last year, a different jury could not come to a unanimous verdict on any of these three charges for Cosby, leading O’Neill to declare a mistrial.
The jury is made up of seven men and five women and they have been sequestered in a hotel during the trial’s two weeks of testimony. One man and one woman are African-American, and the rest appear to be white.
