Entertainment Talk: Bill Cosby; Netflix Hacker And More

Cosby Jury Can Hear About Quaaludes, Not Accuser’s Lawsuit

(AP) — Jurors at Bill Cosby’s sex assault trial can hear his explosive deposition testimony about quaaludes but can’t hear about the lawsuit he settled afterward with the accuser, a judge ruled Friday.

Cosby, 79, is accused of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He calls the encounter consensual.

In the decade-old deposition, Cosby said he got seven prescriptions for quaaludes in the 1970s, intending not to take them himself but to give them to women he was pursuing for sex. The powerful sedatives were banned in 1983, and Cosby said he no longer had them when he met Constand 20 years later.

Defense lawyers therefore pushed to exclude his testimony about quaaludes from the trial. But Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill on Friday said the testimony was fair game.

During the deposition, Constand’s lawyer asked: “When you got the quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?”

“Yes,” Cosby answered.

“Did you ever give any of these young women the quaaludes without their knowledge?” lawyer Dolores Troiani continued.

Cosby’s lawyers objected, and the question went unanswered.

Cosby goes on trial June 5 in suburban Philadelphia, with jury selection set to start May 22. The jury will be sequestered for the estimated two-week trial.

O’Neill on Friday also denied prosecutors’ bid to include Cosby’s comedic riffs about Spanish fly, which they argued showed his familiarity with date-rape drugs. The defense called the passage, from his 1991 book “Childhood,” nothing more than a fanciful story about adolescent boys trying to pursue girls.

Photo: AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

“They’re never in the mood for us,” Cosby wrote. “They need chemicals.”

Spanish fly, made from a green beetle of the same name, has been sold as an aphrodisiac.

Cosby, once known as America’s Dad for his beloved portrayal of Dr. Cliff Huxtable on his top-ranked “The Cosby Show” in the 1980s and ’90s, is charged with felony sexual assault.

O’Neill excluded any references to Constand’s sexual battery and defamation lawsuit or the settlement that followed after Cosby gave four days of deposition testimony in 2005 and 2006. The jury may simply be told the testimony came in a prior legal matter. That means defense lawyers can’t suggest through cross-examination that Constand made the accusations to get money from Cosby.

“I’m surprised that the defense won’t be allowed to at least raise for the jury the fact that a civil suit was pursued. I understand how come (references to) the settlement may be too much, but I think that it is a fair area of inquiry for the defense … to show possible motive,” said veteran criminal lawyer William J. Brennan, who is not involved in the case. Accusers in the Philadelphia church-abuse case, in which he took part, were asked about lawsuits they filed against the Roman Catholic archdiocese.

Cosby has pleaded not guilty in the criminal case, which prosecutors reopened in 2015 after key parts of the deposition were unsealed.

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

Hacker Threatens To Release Stolen Copies Of Netflix Series

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A hacker claims to have stolen the upcoming season of Netflix’s hit series “Orange Is The New Black,” and is asking for an unspecified ransom to not release the entire fifth season online.

The hacker, who goes by the name The Dark Overlord, has already purportedly uploaded the first episode to an illegal file-sharing service. The Associated Press could not legally confirm the authenticity of that uploaded file.

Photo: AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File

New episodes of “Orange” are scheduled for official release on June 9.

Netflix said that a small production vendor that works with several major TV studios had suffered a breach. The Los Gatos, California, company described it as an “active situation” that’s being investigated by the FBI and other authorities.

Pirated copies of “Orange” could dent Netflix’s subscriber growth.

Head Of Motion Picture Association Of America To Step Down

(AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd is stepping down as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

The MPAA said Friday that their board will gather Saturday to name Charles Rivkin as successor to Dodd, who is resigning Sept. 4.

Rivkin was previously the U.S. assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs and a U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco.

Dodd led the MPAA for six years, and one of his main concerns was preventing digital piracy and protecting copyrights. He also helped expand the presence of U.S. films in the Chinese market and revise the revenue-sharing model to benefit Hollywood studios.

Disney Chairman Alan Horn said in a statement that Dodd transformed the MPAA into a global association for the digital era.