Camille Cosby grilled by husband's accusers in civil-suit deposition

It was Camille Cosby's turn Monday to get the third degree from a lawyer for seven of her husband's accusers.

Not that the public got a glimpse of the grilling: It took place behind closed doors and curtains at a Marriott hotel in Springfield, Mass., when Camille Cosby was deposed under heavy security.

Hotel staff cordoned off the area of the hotel near the conference room where she was questioned, and later pulled heavy black draperies across the hallway so no one could see the door to the room, the Associated Press reported.

But she ended up answering questions for only a few hours, and agreed to return for a second day of questions next month. The rest of Monday's near-eight-hour proceeding involved arguing between lawyers on what she could or should answer, and a judge had to be contacted twice, said her chief interrogator, Joseph Cammarata, the lawyer for the seven accusers.

Although depositions in civil cases are typically given in private, nothing about the Bill Cosby case is typical. Aside from the threat of the civil suit itself, any deposition in a civil case might also be used by prosecutors in Pennsylvania who have charged Bill Cosby with felony aggravated sexual assault of one his accusers, Andrea Constand, in 2004.

The deposition he gave in the civil suit arising from that case is now one of the pieces of evidence prosecutors say they will use against him, and the seven accusers in this civil suit also are seeking to get their hands on that case file.

What's next in the Bill Cosby criminal case?

Camille Cosby's deposition lasted until after 7 pm. Cosby's lawyers, as per usual, did not comment afterwards. The usually voluble Cammarata would not describe his questions to Camille Cosby.

Camille Cosby is not a defendant in the civil defamation suit that the seven women have have filed against him in federal court in Springfield, near where the couple have a home. The accusers say Bill Cosby defamed them by denying their allegations that he sexually assaulted them in decades past.

Camille Cosby defends her husband

Camille Cosby, 71, has spoken only once since the accusations against her husband resurfaced in fall 2014, issuing a statement in December 2014 defending her husband as "the man you thought you knew."  She criticized the media for failing to properly "vet" the stories told by his accusers.

"None of us will ever want to be in the position of attacking a victim but the question should be asked — who is the victim?" she said in the statement.

Now she's been drawn into this case because she's been married to him for more than half a century, because she's been his business manager, and because the Cosby lawyers have been unable to stop Cammarata from compelling her to answer questions under oath about what she knows about her husband's extramarital activities.

Cammarata, who sued Bill Clinton in the 1990s in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, believes Camille Cosby in in a unique position to know something about the accusations from five-dozen women who say Bill Cosby drugged and/or raped them in episodes dating back to the 1960s, and he's determined to pry it out of her.

But he was not allowed to question her about anything that could fall under the Massachusetts law protecting husband-and-wife intimate conversations. That was the sole concession the Cosbys won in their flurry of failed motions to stall or stop the deposition.

"To think that Mrs Cosby has any relevant information about her husband's secret extra-marital sexual interludes is not a serious thought," says attorney Stuart Slotnick, who's been following the Cosby saga. "Some may wonder if this is a tactic to put pressure on Cosby. And many may answer that question in the affirmative."

Camille Cosby's deposition in civil suit will proceed, with limits

Cosby's lawyers have said in court papers that the deposition is "nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to pressure (the) defendant in the face of subjecting his wife to the shame and embarrassment of responding to questions about his alleged infidelities and sexual misconduct."

Depositions in civil cases usually include only the people being deposed, their lawyers and a stenographer in the room. Written transcripts are generally sealed because they are considered discovery materials shared between lawyers on both sides.

But depositions can sometimes become public, for instance when they are attached to support a motion in the case. Bill Cosby's 2005 deposition in the Andrea Constand case, which has now led to the criminal charges against him, was sealed for 10 years after he settled Constand's civil suit.

Then, in the summer of 2015, the AP persuaded the judge in the case to release excerpts from his deposition, in which he acknowledged obtaining drugs to give to women he sought for sex.

Contributing: The Associated Press