Accuser talked about framing celebrity, Cosby witness says

Associated Press

NORRISTOWN, Pa.

The chief accuser at Bill Cosby’s sexual-assault retrial talked about framing a celebrity before going to police with her allegations in 2005, a key defense witness testified Wednesday as the TV star’s lawyers began putting on their case.

Marguerite Jackson, an academic adviser at Temple University, said Andrea Constand told her she could fabricate sexual-assault allegations and “get that money” from a civil suit, bolstering Cosby’s efforts to show Constand made up the allegations against him to extort a big civil settlement.

Jackson’s account was immediately challenged by prosecutors, who suggested she wasn’t on the trip where she says her conversation with Constand took place.

Her appearance on the witness stand was one of the most highly anticipated moments of a retrial that has Cosby, 80, defending himself against criminal charges that he knocked Constand out with pills and then sexually assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.