Cosby won't testify, defense rests in sex assault trial

Cosby's wife of 53 years, Camille, was in court for the first time in the trial.

The judge in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial instructed jurors to break for the evening on Monday, after four hours of deliberations. They asked the judge to repeat two different parts of Cosby's statements to authorities, asked the court to define the phrase "without her knowledge" in one of the charges, and asked to hear repeat testimony from the Canadian detective who interviewed Constand. He says what they did was consensual. To many of those survivors, convicting Cosby over one incident is a kind of collective justice. In that case he gave damaging testimony, but it did not become public until 2015.

Bill Cosby was a predator or a lover.

The jury was set to return on Tuesday morning, but it was not clear when Cosby would receive his verdict.

"You have decided not to testify in this case, correct?" They've been deliberating for two hours, and have had dinner brought in.

"I want you to think about the courage Andrea Constand has had doing what she had to do", he urged the jury. She says they left her semi-conscious. "Because he drugged her to do this", the prosecutor said. "I said 'I trust you.' I took the pills and I swallowed the pills down".

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand has done.

The jury got the case late Monday afternoon, on the sixth day of the trial. Cosby has said he is legally blind because of glaucoma.

On an unspecified date, she said, the women saw a news story about a famous man accused of drugging and sexually assaulting women. The repercussions from the case already destroyed the family friendly image of a man whose groundbreaking work in television earned him the nickname America's Dad, and produced a stunning late-in-life downfall of one of the most beloved stars in the entertainment world.

Philadelphia defence lawyer Alan Tauber says that's less likely in Cosby's case because his fame makes him an unlikely flight risk. Yet to Cosby's defense team, the prosecution represents something else - a he-said, she-said where she says she was violated, and he says the encounter was mutually gratifying and romantic. Cosby also confessed to slipping women Quaaludes to women for sex.

The lawyer emphasized that criminal charges were put into motion by attorneys in a previous civil lawsuit that offered no evidence of guilt.

Prosecutors said "fancy lawyering" could not save Cosby from his own words - namely, his admission about groping Ms Constand after giving her pills he knew could put her to sleep. He later told police they were Benadryl.

Mr Steele also reminded jurors about a telephone conversation in which Cosby apologised to Ms Constand's mother and described himself as a "sick man".

Earlier in the day, Brian McMonagle, one of Cosby's lawyers, highlighted Constand's alleged inconsistencies and those of Kelly Johnson, another accuser who testified on Constand's behalf.

Andrea Constand watched from the front row of the packed courtroom gallery on Monday as Cosby's lawyers spent almost two hours seizing on inconsistencies in her story in a final push for acquittal. She sat in the front row during closing arguments by the defense.

Bill Cosby's accuser Andrea Constand leaves the courtroom after closing arguments in the Cosby trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania. By allowing Cosby's wife to enter the courtroom in the middle of proceedings while the judge was speaking, officials at the Montgomery Courthouse extended her an extraordinary and unprecedented courtesy.

Sex with an unconscious person can not be consensual, Steele noted.

Cosby is charged with sexually assaulting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004.

"We all know better now", said Steele, who contemptuously accused the defense of the "exploitation of myths".

Cosby's attorneys sought to portray her as a woman whose allegations were motivated by money. The witness, who was a detective, gave six minutes of testimony, the Associated Press reported. Constand also attended the closing arguments, and showed little reaction. Cosby's lawyers have argued that the encounter was consensual.

The defence has rested after a single brief witness in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial.

In the prosecution's closing argument, Steele said that Cosby's lurid statements from 2005 helped corroborate Constand's allegations.

The closing arguments took place after the defense rested its case after questioning just one witness.

Bill Cosby has declined to testify in his sexual assault trial. Numerous jurors were expressionless during testimony, but a few were smiling and chuckling when they entered the courtroom on Monday afternoon to receive final instructions from Steven T. O'Neill, the presiding Montgomery County judge.

Last week the prosecution spent days laying out the case against Cosby, calling 12 witnesses to the stand.