Juror: Cosby panel was concerned about ‘politics’
PITTSBURGH — A juror in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial said Thursday some jurors were concerned prosecutors waited 10 years to charge him, expressing suspicion that politics had played a role in the case.
The juror told The Associated Press the panel was almost evenly split in its deliberations, with a similar number of jurors wanting to convict the 79-year-old entertainer as acquit him on charges he drugged and molested a woman at his Philadelphia-area home in 2004.
He was the second juror to speak out after the jury deadlocked in the case. A mistrial was declared Saturday after 52 hours of deliberations. Prosecutors plan to put Cosby on trial again.
The juror who spoke to the AP 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 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 passed on the case in early 2005. Prosecutors used Cosby’s deposition as evidence at the criminal trial.
The juror spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive deliberations.
Constand told jurors Cosby gave her pills that made her woozy and then penetrated her with his fingers 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 after she said Cosby assaulted her, but a prosecutor declared her case too weak to bring charges.
A decade later, another district attorney revived the probe after excerpts from Cosby’s lurid deposition about drugs and sex became public, and dozens of women came forward also alleging him of sexual assault. Cosby was charged shortly before the statute of limitations was set to expire.
The juror who spoke to the AP said other jurors expressed the view in the deliberating room that “politics was involved.”
“I think they created this whole thing, a case that was settled in ’05, and we had to bring it up again in ’17 with no new evidence,” the juror said.
The juror declined to reveal whether he wanted to convict or acquit Cosby but left little doubt about how he felt.
The juror characterized the deliberations as tense.
“Crying by men and by women and more than one. And the tears came towards the end, it was so tense,” he said.
Another juror told ABC News on Wednesday jurors had voted 10-2 to convict Cosby on two of three counts. The juror who spoke to the AP confirmed that vote but said three people then changed their minds. He said the panel was typically more “evenly split” and “up the middle.”
“It was hopeless,” he said of the prospect of a unanimous verdict.