Marguerite Jackson, a former fellow employee of Temple University alongside Bill Cosby’s accuser Andrea Constand, was permitted to testify for the defense on Wednesday during the comedian’s retrial, after her testimony was blocked from the original 2017 trial.
Jackson told the court that she once shared a hotel room with Constand during one of the women’s basketball team’s away game nights in Rhode Island, where a news report on a celebrity accused of assault prompted Constand to tell Jackson that a “high-profile person” once assaulted her.
“I said, ‘really? Who, when?’” testified Jackson. “‘Did you report it?’ She said, ‘I couldn’t prove it.’”
Jackson continued, “I said, ‘Did this really happen to you?’ and [Constand] said ‘no, no it didn’t. But I could say it happened, get that money. I could quit my job, go back to school.’”
Prior to the current criminal proceedings, Constand sued Cosby over her accusations, eventually settling the suit for an amount that was revealed at the current retrial to be just under $3.4 million.
The cross-examination from prosecutor Stewart Ryan hinged largely on the amendments between Jackson’s initial statement and her second one, which was revised with Cosby’s legal team. Particularly at issue was a discrepancy between whether Jackson registered “surprise” at learning of Constand’s accusation against Cosby in 2005 or in 2016, when she was allegedly on a cruise ship discussing the Cosby allegations with another comedian she met, who bought her a drink and reportedly joked, “I didn’t put anything in it.”
Andrea Constand herself had testified in the past week that she did not remember a Marguerite Jackson but that the name “Margo” rang a bell.
Cosby is being re-tried on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, stemming from Constand’s accusation that the comedian molested her in 2004 at his home outside of Philadelphia.
Cosby’s initial trial in the matter ended in a mistrial in July 2017 after the jury was unable to reach a verdict following five days of deliberations.
Earlier Wednesday, the jury heard the comedian’s previous testimony regarding Quaaludes and sex.
In a transcript from Cosby’s deposition stemming from Constand’s civil suit against him, the comedian said he obtained Quaaludes because, at the time, they were a drug that young people were partying with, “and there were times that I wanted to have them just in case.”
When asked if he knew he was going to give the Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with when he obtained them, Cosby answered, “Yes.”
On Wednesday, the court also heard testimony from Judith Regan, whose Regan Books published model Janice Dickinson’s memoir “No Lifeguard on Duty.”
While being questioned, Regan said that Dickinson, who testified earlier in the retrial, said that Cosby had drugged and raped her, and that she wanted to include the alleged incident in the book.
Saying that the accusation could not be included in the book without corroboration for legal reasons, Regan told the court that Dickinson was “very unhappy” that it wasn’t included in the memoir.