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Why Bill Cosby Admitted Under Oath to Getting Drugs to Have Sex With Women
BY ELIZA GRAY
JULY 9, 2015
TIME MAGAZINE
The revelation this week that Bill Cosby admitted under oath to buying quaaludes to give to young women to have sex rocked the entertainment world and added fuel to the allegations that the comedian had drugged and sexually assaulted several women. But it also raised the question: Why would Cosby, who had the ability to hire the best legal counsel money could buy, make such a damning admission in the first place?
It turns out that Cosby’s disclosure about the quaaludes—which came during a 2005 deposition— may not have been as legally explosive then as it appears now.
Benjamin Brafman, a prominent New York criminal defense attorney, who does not represent Cosby, said the partial transcript of the deposition released by the Associated Press does not show that Cosby violated a law. Cosby apparently obtained quaaludes through a prescription, the AP reported.
In the deposition, which stemmed from a sexual abuse case against Cosby filed by a former Temple University employee, Cosby was asked by a lawyer, “When you got the quaaludes [in the 1970s], was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” Cosby answered, “Yes.”
Brafman said the transcript is damaging to Cosby and “will haunt him for the rest of his life,” but it does not show that he committed a crime.
“There is no acknowledgement that he gave the quaalude to someone underage, or to a woman who wasn’t consenting,” Brafman told TIME. “Quaalude was the love drug of choice in those years. Doctors were lawfully prescribing it in those years.”
Brafman pointed out that Cosby could have been court-ordered to give the deposition, and it would have been worse if he had lied under oath.
“You don’t know what prompted the lawyer to ask the question,” Brafman said. “They may have had copies of prescriptions or testimony of doctors. For Cosby, making the admission under oath, even though it is damaging, it is preferable to perjury.”
Brafman added: “From a public relations standpoint, it is a disaster, but I’m not sure it necessarily advances the ball in terms of any legal proceedings.”
But lawyers representing women who say Cosby sexually assaulted them disagree, saying Cosby’s admission adds weight to their accusations. “The women have been saying they’ve been drugged and abused, and these documents appear to support the allegations,” lawyer Joe Cammarata, who represents Therese Serignese, one of the women who says she was sexually assaulted by Cosby, told the AP.
Quaaludes, the brand name for methaqualone, were a popular sleeping pill in the 1960s and were used in the 1970s and ’80s as a club drug, particularly to help people come off of a cocaine high. In 1973, they were classified as a Schedule 11 federal narcotic, which means doctors could still prescribe quaaludes but it was illegal to abuse them (Adderall is a Schedule 11 drug today). In 1984 President Ronald Reagan signed a law banning the production of the drug, making it illegal. Cosby’s admission concerns a period during the 1970s, when quaaludes would have been legal with a prescription.
Why Bill Cosby Admitted to Getting Drugs to Have Sex With Women
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