Here’s Bill Cosby Mugshot After He Was Charged With Assault in Constand Case
Bill Cosby’s first mugshot, courtesy of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
Since 2005, dozens of women have accused legendary Philadelphia comedian Bill Cosby of offenses including sexual assault, but Cosby has never been charged with a crime. Until today.
On Wednesday morning in the Montgomery County Detectives Bureau in Norristown, Pennsylvania, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the Cheltenham Township Police Department gathered to announce criminal charges against the longtime Cheltenham resident, who is 78.
Cosby has been charged with aggravated indecent assault, a first-degree felony. In-depth details of the allegations are available in the criminal complaint and affidavit of probable cause, which we published in full here. Court documents indicate that the alleged offenses occurred on January 15, 2004.
Bail was set at $1 million by Magisterial District Judge Elizabeth A. McHugh. Cosby posted the required ten percent in cash and is a free man. A preliminary hearing is set for January 14th in McHugh’s courtroom.
Later in the day, District Attorney-Elect Steele clarified the charge against Cosby for Philadelphia magazine. Of the one count of aggravated indecent assault that Cosby has been charged with, there are three subsections that he can be found guilty of: Aggravated indecent assault without consent; aggravated indecent assault while complainant is unconscious or unaware that penetration is occurring; and aggravated indecent assault of an impaired person.
Constand reportedly first met Cosby in November 2002, when she was employed by Temple’s women’s basketball team. In January 2004, she went to his home, where he allegedly “touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated” her, according to her account given in a civil lawsuit she later filed.
In addition to the criminal charge, Cosby has also been sued by some of his accusers, and he recently fired back, filing his own lawsuit against seven of them, accusing them of defamation.
Former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor considered the Constand case back in 2005 but declined to file charges, a decision that cost him reelection when he ran for his old seat earlier this year. And Constand filed a lawsuit against Castor in October.
The statute of limitations in the Constand case was expected to run out in January. District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman’s last day in office will be January 3rd, at which point she will become a Common Pleas Court judge in Montgomery County.
Word of Cosby’s alleged misdeeds originally surfaced in 2005 and were exhaustively documented by longtime Philadelphia magazine writer Bob Huber in the 2006 Philly Mag article “Dr. Huxtable and Mr. Hyde.”
But the allegations didn’t really catch fire in the media until after comedian Hannibal Buress called Cosby a “rapist” at the Trocadero in October 2014, a moment captured on video by Philly Mag’s Dan McQuade. That video went viral.
One month after the Buress video was released, I confronted Cosby on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where he was the featured guest at a Veteran’s Day event, praised by Ed Rendell, Mayor Michael Nutter, and Congressman Chaka Fattah. When asked if he had any response to the mounting allegations against him, Cosby whispered “no” in my ear and then smiled.
