Juror: Cosby panel was concerned by the politics of case
He questions long delay in bringing charges against star.
A juror in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial said Thursday that some jurors were concerned prosecutors had waited 10 years to charge him, expressing suspicion that politics had played a role in the case.
The juror said in an interview that the panel, which deadlocked in the case, was almost evenly split in its deliberations on whether to convict or acquit the 79-yearold entertainer on charges he drugged and molested a woman at his Philadelphia-area home in 2004.
He was the second juror to speak out. A mistrial was declared Saturday after 52 hours of deliberations. Prosecutors plan to try Cosby again.
The juror, who spoke on condition of anonymity, questioned the long delay in bringing charges against the TV star, suggesting that “no new evidence from ’05 to now has showed up, no stained clothing, no smoking gun, nothing.”
In reality, prosecutors reopened the investigation in 2015 after the public release of a deposition that Cosby gave in 2005 and 2006 as part of accuser Andrea Constand’s lawsuit against him — testimony that hadn’t yet been offered when another district attorney declined to prosecute the case in early 2005.
Constand told jurors Cosby gave her pills that made her woozy and then took sexual advantage of her as she lay paralyzed on a couch, unable to tell him to stop. Cosby has said his encounter with Constand was consensual.
Constand, now 44, initially went to police about a year later, but a prosecutor declared her case too weak to bring charges.
Another district attorney revived the probe in 2015 after excerpts from Cosby’s lurid deposition about drugs and sex became public, and dozens of women came forward also accusing him of sexual assault. Cosby was charged shortly before the statute of limitations in Constand’s case was set to expire.
The juror declined to reveal whether he wanted to convict or acquit Cosby but left little doubt about how he felt. He said he was suspicious of Constand’s story, questioning why she waited to tell authorities about the alleged assault and suggesting the clothing she wore to Cosby’s house had influenced his view of their encounter.
“When you ask for help on your resume, on your resignation letter, which she did, and he, Mr. Cosby, invites her to his home and she arrives in a bare midriff with incense and bath salts, that’s a question,” said the juror, appearing to lump several meetings between Cosby and Constand into one.