A verdict that makes sense

For jurors in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case, the verdict ultimately came down to one question: Whom did they believe?

More than 60 women have publicly accused the comedian and actor of drugging and assaulting them, but a Pennsylvania jury had to consider only one of those cases this week. Andrea Constand said Cosby gave her three blue pills that sedated her before he molested her in 2004 at his suburban Philadelphia home. Prosecutors’ first attempt to convict Cosby in the case ended in a hung jury last year. This time, the jury deliberated for about 14 hours before finally reaching a guilty verdict.

Cosby and his lawyers acknowledged that he and Constand had sexual contact, so the jury only had to deliberate whether the act was consensual. Pennsylvania law says that an unconscious person cannot give consent, nor can a person who has been intentionally drugged by someone else. The jury asked for more guidance about the definition of consent during deliberations, but Judge Steven O’Neill responded, “You have the legal definition of the crime. … If that definition does not contain the definition of consent, then the jury will decide what consent means to them.”

Constand has always said she never gave Cosby permission to touch her, and he has always said she did. Each side in the case worked to discredit the other as a habitual liar. In the end, it came down to the question that has defined the #MeToo movement: Who is telling the truth? O’Neill instructed the jury to “apply your common sense” in deciding the question.

Similar instructions are given in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 22:25-27 says that if a man rapes a woman in “open country”, where her cries for help cannot be heard, he must be put to death. He cannot argue that she consented if he contrived a situation that excluded the possibility of witnesses.

The #MeToo movement is filled with stories of powerful men luring their victims to private places. For Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and their ilk, hotel suites, lavish mansions, and locked offices became the open country of Deuteronomy. Evidence shows Cosby added yet another layer of secrecy by drugging his victims so even they wouldn’t know what was happening until it was too late.

For the women who say Cosby assaulted them, just being believed has given them a sense of justice.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Cosby accuser Lili Bernard told reporters after the verdict’s announcement. “I feel like my faith in humanity is restored. … It is also a victory for womanhood and it is a victory for all sexual assault survivors, female and male.”

#SwedesToo

A #MeToo scandal has so shaken the group of Swedish academics who select the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature that it might not give out the award at all this year. The trouble started brewing in November, when 18 women accused noted Swedish cultural figure Jean-Claude Arnault of sexual assault and harassment. Arnault’s wife, poet Katarina Frostenson, belongs to the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel literature prize. A Swedish newspaper reported Arnault also repeatedly leaked information about the academy’s Nobel deliberations. Several academy members called for Frostenson’s ouster and then resigned themselves when they couldn’t muster enough votes. Now Frostenson, another academy member, and the academy’s permanent secretary have also stepped down, leaving the group one member short of the 12 it needs to elect new members to fill the vacancies.

What comes next? According to the Daily Mail, the temporary head of the Swedish Academy has said he doesn’t know but hopes to figure it out soon.

The scandal represents more than just embarrassment for Sweden, which takes the responsibility for selecting Nobel Prize recipients very seriously. Protesters held a rally Thursday in Stockholm to demand that every member of the literature selection committee resign. Similar demonstrations were planned in cities across the country. Even the king of Sweden weighed in, threatening to use his authority to change the Swedish Academy’s rules to fill the empty board positions. —L.L.

Time to shine

Warner Bros. has signed on to combat the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans on U.S. television and in movies with the planned release this summer of Crazy Rich Asians. Constance Wu (Fresh Off the Boat) stars in the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling book about a Chinese-American woman who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s family (who, per the title, are crazy rich). Similar to Marvel’s approach with Black Panther’s treatment of Africans, the producers of Crazy Rich Asians worked to build a cast and crew that celebrated Asian culture both on and off camera. “There is a hunger for not just token representation but to really dive into the world of different ethnicities and races,” producer Brad Simpson said. The film is scheduled to come out Aug. 17. —L.L.

Real fake news

The account of how a student loan refinancing company invented a fake expert and got well-known media outlets like The Washington Post to quote him should send shivers up the spines of online journalists everywhere. It turns out the The Student Loan Report’s Drew Cloud was a made-up persona used by multiple employees of the same company that owns LendEDU, a company that sells—you guessed it—student loans. The story is a cautionary tale about questioning what you read on the internet and how to tell fake news from the truth. —L.L.