Had he been found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, which allegedly took place at his Philadelphia home 13 years ago, he could have faced up to a decade in prison. The judge told them to try again for a verdict.
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Within moments of the mistrial being declared, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office announced that they will retry the case.
She said she hopes the case is a wakeup call for women in assault cases, saying they need to get to a hospital immediately to “get that DNA saved”.
Lawyers for Constand released their own statement Saturday afternoon, thanking the district attorney’s office and “the many police officers and detectives who worked on this case”.
Instead she put across a venomous attack on Steele’s credibility, as well as that of Judge Steven O’Neill and the media.
“Do not in any way feel you have let the justice system down”, O’Neill told the jury in a Norristown, Pa. courtroom.
As jurors left for the night, O’Neill praised their “hard work, dedication and fidelity to your oath”.
“Social attitudes in general affect what happens in criminal trials, in rape cases. Overtly arrogant, collaborating with the district attorney”, she said in her statement, which was tweeted by her husband and read by an associate of the public relations firm representing Cosby. After all, virtually all litigators have been surprised, in talking with jurors after real or mock trials, to learn that it was a failure to present a bit of readily available evidence which doomed their case.
“As I said before, on and on, in the deposition about the carrying-ons that he was involved in the 70s”.
She once served on a jury where the foreperson was the lone holdout for an acquittal.
“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. Lawyer Brian McMonagle told jurors that while Cosby had been unfaithful to his wife, he didn’t commit a crime. A new trial date has not yet been set. “The second time around, are they coming with an agenda?”
The jury ultimately could not reach a decision as to whose version of events to believe – Cosby’s, or that of his accuser Andrea Constand – and spent days asking to have testimony and statements read back to them.
Cosby, who gave the deposition as part of Constand’s lawsuit against him, said he got seven prescriptions for the powerful sedative in the 1970s for the goal of giving them to women with whom he wanted to have sex.
And so a trial that was probably the biggest celebrity prosecution since the murder trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995 has ended without a final outcome. The discovery in those cases is underway, but his deposition testimony will remain on hold until the retrial in the criminal case.
Cosby and his publicity team emerged triumphant from the courthouse on Saturday.
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But Cosby’s reputation remains in tatters, following a slew of sexual assault allegations from about 60 women that have destroyed the “America’s dad” image he built as star of the long-running 1980s TV comedy “The Cosby Show”.
