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Jurors in Bill Cosby Trial Finish Day 2 of Deliberations With No Verdict Jurors in Bill Cosby Trial Finish Day 2 of Deliberations With No Verdict
(35 minutes later)
• Read updates of Day 8 of the Bill Cosby trial.• Read updates of Day 8 of the Bill Cosby trial.
• After more than 16 hours of deliberation over two days, the jurors in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case have still not been able to reach a verdict. They stopped deliberations after 9 p.m. and will return on Wednesday morning.• After more than 16 hours of deliberation over two days, the jurors in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case have still not been able to reach a verdict. They stopped deliberations after 9 p.m. and will return on Wednesday morning.
• Bill Cosby, 79, who has been at the courthouse each day, awaiting the verdict, has been a quiet presence at his trial.• Bill Cosby, 79, who has been at the courthouse each day, awaiting the verdict, has been a quiet presence at his trial.
• Also at the courthouse, Andrea Constand, the former Temple University staff member who says Mr. Cosby, the school’s most famous alumnus, drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004. She too is waiting for the verdict.• Also at the courthouse, Andrea Constand, the former Temple University staff member who says Mr. Cosby, the school’s most famous alumnus, drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004. She too is waiting for the verdict.
So far the jury has come forward four times to rehear evidence or seek a clarification. On Monday the panel asked Judge Steven T. O’Neill to clarify the context in which Mr. Cosby had described the three pills he gave Ms. Constand as “little friends.” The judge read aloud a section of Mr. Cosby’s deposition testimony from a 2005 lawsuit filed by Ms. Constand in which he had used that phrase. It was unclear what the jurors were seeking to clarify, although the phrase had figured prominently in the prosecution’s closing argument. The jury in the Montgomery County Courthouse here asked to review part of Mr. Cosby’s own account, given in a 2005 lawsuit deposition, where he discussed meeting the woman, Andrea Constand, when she was a Temple University employee, having sexual encounters with her at his home near here, and giving her pills on the night of the incident, in 2004. She has said the pills incapacitated her, but he has said they were Benadryl.
On Tuesday, at the jurors’ request, the judge read other excerpts from Mr. Cosby’s deposition testimony, in particular, in Mr. Cosby’s own words, how he met Ms. Constand, and in graphic detail his version of the encounters at his home near Philadelphia. On one occasion, they had sexual contact, he said, and then she stopped him from going further. On a later night, in 2004, he gave her pills that she said incapacitated her. He described them in the deposition testimony as Benadryl. Later, the jury asked to review trial testimony from the first police detective to interview Ms. Constand after she reported the incident, about a year after it took place. Mr. Cosby’s lawyer made much of that interview during the trial, noting contradictions between this early statement to the police, and her later account of what took place.
Ms. Constand sued Mr. Cosby after prosecutors in 2005 decided not to bring charges against Mr. Cosby in connection with what Ms. Constand said had been an assault in 2004. The prosecutors revisited that decision in 2015 after Mr. Cosby’s deposition from that case surfaced and they read where he acknowledged having secured quaaludes to have sex with women. In an unusual scene, as the jury deliberated inside, Mr. Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, held a news conference outside, publicizing a claim that jurors had not been allowed to hear.
Later Tuesday, the jurors asked to rehear the testimony of David Mason, a member of the Durham regional police in Canada, who took Ms. Constand’s first statement when she went to the authorities in January 2005. Mr. Wyatt read a written statement from Marguerite Jackson, a student adviser at Temple. Ms. Jackson said that when she and Ms. Constand both worked for the university, Ms. Constand told her that she had been drugged and assaulted by a famous person, then later said it had not happened, but that making the allegation could result in a valuable lawsuit settlement.
The defense had made much of the apparent inconsistencies in the statement. She had told the detective, incorrectly, that the incident with Mr. Cosby happened after a dinner at a restaurant, that she had never been alone with him before and that their contact afterward was rare. Dolores M. Troiani, a lawyer who has represented Ms. Constand, said of Ms. Jackson: “She is not telling the truth. That letter is not an accurate depiction of what occurred, if anything occurred at all.” Ms. Constand testified last week that she did not know Ms. Jackson.
In later statements to police in Pennsylvania, she said she went directly to his home, had been alone with him before when he made unwelcome advances and they had stayed in contact afterward, mainly because of Temple University business. The defense team, which has said the encounter with Ms. Constand had been consensual, wanted to call Ms. Jackson as a witness. But on Monday, Judge Steven T. O’Neill refused to allow her testimony, calling it hearsay.
For someone once so broadly feted and outspoken, the image he presents each day in court, sitting quietly at a table near the front, is at striking odds with the glow that once used to surround him. His manifest charm as an entertainer seldom flashes. His face is impassive even as graphic descriptions of his sexual encounters are read aloud. Under Pennsylvania rules, such hearsay evidence can be introduced if it directly rebuts something a witness said, which Judge O’Neill apparently concluded was not true of the testimony Ms. Jackson would have given. But the United States Supreme Court has ruled that clearly relevant testimony that could plainly establish innocence must be allowed, said Dennis McAndrews, a Pennsylvania lawyer who has attended the Cosby trial.
Some of that may be a simple function of age for Mr. Cosby, who is 79, and fighting blindness. Some of that is a measure of what confronts him. The question in this case is whether the testimony is “so critical to the question of guilt or innocence that it trumps the state’s evidentiary rules,” Mr. McAndrews said.
For someone once so popular, the number of supporters who have come to Norristown, Pa., to be with him has been modest. A star from the “Cosby Show” days. Two fellow comedians. Some friends from Temple University, where he was once a trustee. A former chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights who described him as a friend. Shoulder to shoulder they have sat in the front row to show support. But this week they stopped coming. That is a question Mr. Cosby’s lawyers could raise on appeal if he were found guilty.
The most important supporter, his wife, Camille, appeared in court on Monday. She walked in after he was seated, and then moved along the front row so she could see him past the lawyers and aides. When the judge called the morning session to a close, she walked quickly into the front area, leaned over her husband as he sat in his chair, tending to him. But she was gone in the afternoon and has not returned. The famed comedian and actor is now starring in the kind of drama one tries to avoid. But for someone once so popular, broadly feted and outspoken, he seems an incongruous figure, waiting quietly and looking serious, except when he embraces and smiles at his lawyers and aides.
He often greets them warmly, sometimes with an embrace, a pat on the back, a smile, a joke. They were the only ones there for him on Tuesday, the jury’s second day of deliberations. Some of Mr. Cosby’s demeanor is likely a simple function of age. His eyesight is failing and he needs help to move about the building. But some portion is likely his embrace of the gravity of his circumstances. Once one of America’s biggest stars, his legacy is probably irreparably stained by the dozens of accusations against him by women — five of whom sat in the courtroom on Tuesday.
Sitting near him, though, was Ms. Constand, in the front row on the opposite of the room. Their line of sight between each other is broken, it seems, by a large projector screen set up to help jurors. So even if he could see, she would be hidden from him. During testimony last week, she looked down from the stand and identified him as the man who she said drugged and assaulted her. He didn’t react. Certainly, the number of people who have come to support him has been modest.
At rare moments, though, Mr. Cosby manages to respond to the crowds outside the courthouse, waving his cane, pretending to stumble, still an entertainer, still Fat Albert’s creator: “Hey, hey, hey.” A former co-star from “The Cosby Show,” two fellow comedians, and a former chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights are among the few friends who accompanied him and sat, shoulder to shoulder, in the front row of the courtroom, just behind the defense table. Through six days of trial, his most important supporter, his wife, Camille, appeared in court once, on Monday morning, also taking a place in the front row, and leaning over her seated husband during a recess.
The 12 jurors operate under a triple burden: deciding whether to label someone a criminal, being sequestered away from their families because of the enormous attention the case has drawn, and the knowledge that whatever they do, millions of people will pay attention and even pass judgment on them.
They are all residents of Allegheny County — seven men and five women, 10 whites and two blacks — and were chosen in Pittsburgh, rather than here in the suburbs of Philadelphia, in the hope of finding people less exposed to pretrial publicity.
“This is literally the greatest jury I have ever had,” Judge O’Neill told them Monday evening as he sent them off to deliberate, “and they are only 300 miles away from home.”