It was as if we all chose to undergo a massive case of cultural amnesia at once, shrugging off the case with little public outcry.
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“Bill Cosby has already been exposed as a predator who hid behind his jovial mask for more than 50 years and no jury verdict will ever change that”, she said. “We will press forward to try to get that done, to get justice done”. “Power is the ability to defy phenomenon, making it act in a desired manner”, said his long-time publicist Andrew Wyatt. At one point, counselor Angela Agrusa patted him on the shoulder.
Jewel Allison, a New York-based artist, poet and activist who has said Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in the 1980s, hugged Constand in the courtroom after the mistrial announcement. “We, the jury, are deadlocked on all counts”, said the note read by O’Neill on Saturday morning. None of the jurors commented after the trial ended and they headed home to the Pittsburgh area, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) from the courthouse outside Philadelphia.
But the same judge Cosby’s wife Camille called “arrogant” in a scathing statement after the mistrial was declared Saturday near Philadelphia is likely to preside over his retrial. They also showed jurors testimony from his deposition in which he admitted giving young women sedatives in the 1970s. “Do not in any way feel that you have let the justice system down”, the judge told them.
Prosecutors plan to retry the comedian on sexual assault charges. It is not yet clear why jurors could not reach a verdict, or how close they came.
While Constand waited for jurors to come to their decision on Thursday, she passed time shooting mini-basketballs in a hallway at the Mongomery County Courthouse in Norristown, and she tweeted a 25-second, slow-motion video of her shooting a ball through a hoop attached to a cart.
“During some of the most painfully, aggravating parts of our trial, particularly jury deliberations it was he who was keeping us going”, he said.
The waiting room which he was sent to with associates and lawyers during breaks became his “dressing room”, they said, and visitors were announced as if stopping by for an autograph on the set of a hit show.
“I was jolted awake, and I felt Mr. Cosby’s hand groping my breasts under my shirt”, she testified last week. “I wanted it to stop”.
An eighth woman withdrew her lawsuit and a federal judge dismissed a ninth accuser’s case, finding her complaint inadequate.
The prosecution spent five days painstakingly trying to build their case, calling Constand and her mother to the stand, as well as another woman who alleged that Cosby also drugged and assaulted her in Bel Air in 1996. Time will tell whether prosecutors will bring another case against the famed TV comedian.
The hung jury outcome was not unexpected.
“Imagine it’s you being asked to defend age-old accusations – how do you defend that?” he said, adding: “Waiting so long, when people have died”.
On Friday, the jurors appeared to be doing just that. They have now deliberated for a total of almost 30 hours and will resume on Thursday morning.
O’Neill asked each juror if the impasse was impossible to resolve.
A jury deliberated for more than 52 hours over six days before declaring itself hopelessly deadlocked. “Everyone is assuming one way or another”, said O’Neill.
Steele, who is a career prosecutor, will have insights in the retrial that he did not have in the first trial: He and his key witnesses have now gotten a detailed view of the defence team’s strategy and its methods of handling cross-examinations.
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“We came here looking for an acquittal”. In such cases, a do-over would be welcome, says Banzhaf. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article. “We have done that”, said Steele.
