Jury in the Cosby case deserved some privacy
I really wasn’t going to wade back into that swampy water again, at least not without first getting all of my shots. The last time I dipped my toe into the Cosby case, I became Public Enemy Number 1-50 (or however many Cosby accusers there actually were). It was almost comical the way people would twist my words, take them out of context and call me a rape apologist (which is exactly what someone called me on the letters page of another newspaper). I know, if you can’t take the heat, stay off of Twitter, but I did have an out of body experience watching the social media world implode because I said the words “due process” in the same breath as “I have reasonable doubt.”
When you disagree with them, some people self-combust. Just check out the comments section at the bottom of this column.
But ultimately, I had to come back in. Or rather, as Michael Corleone said in the only good part of “Godfather III,” “I thought I was out, and they pulled me back in.” “They” was actually “he,” and “he” was Judge Steven O’Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.
On Wednesday, O’Neill held decided to release the names of the jurors who served on the Cosby panel. A bunch of journalists had petitioned to have the identities of these factfinders from Allegheny County revealed, ostensibly in the name of the First Amendment. Apparently, we the avid readers of tabloid fodder, the ones who believe the stories we peruse about alien babies while we stand in the checkout line, have a “right” to know about why the Cosby jurors acted the way they did (or didn’t).
The First Amendment is always good for people who like to speak from their high-horse perches, particularly while that high horse is taking a dump on our privacy.
Don’t get me wrong. The words “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” are majestic.
But they are going to be completely irrelevant when the jurors start devolving (as they already apparently have) into actors in a summer stock version of “Lord of the Flies.” Already jurors are leaking lurid tales about the two holdouts who wouldn’t convict, about people bursting into tears, about someone slamming his or her fist so hard into a wall that a pinky was in need of triage.
The thing is this. Not every journalist who has a computer is a Woodward or Bernstein, no matter how willing they are to suspend disbelief. It’s very hard to understand what real value comes from hounding the men and women on the Cosby jury for their “take” on the deliberations.
And even if they can, I think that their right to privacy, including the ones who do not want to be identified and irrespective of the ones who are narcissistic reality show wannabes, is more important than the public’s right to know why exactly they failed to convict Bill Cosby. There is a very real danger that their lives or safety could be threatened.
How do I know this? Well I thought you’d never ask.
Last week, I went through a veritable whirlwind when I wrote a column (in another paper) about not believing Bill Cosby was a rapist. I said that I didn’t think there was sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the chorus of 60 or so women led by Gloria Allred did not establish that Cosby was anything other than a horn dawg.
After that column appeared, I was invited to appear on CNN twice (and then disinvited when they bumped me over the Jeff Sessions hearing), invited to appear on Fox29 (which I did … thanks Alex and Mike!), excoriated on Twitter by people with a longstanding distaste for my point of view, flooded with emails telling me that I was at best, a traitor to my gender and at worst, a prime and worthy subject for being raped, and stalked by the kind of people who believe that the definition of sexual assault is as fuzzy and “flexible” as the definition of a “child” is to Cecile Richards.
It was an interesting few days, to say the least. And I just wrote a column.
Imagine what the men and women who collectively failed to convict Bill Cosby of rape would be subject to. I mean, every witch hunt needs a few witches, and if a judge makes it easy for you to figure out who they are, all the better.
I think that Judge O’Neill made a very gross error in piercing the confidentiality of the jury room and allowing even limited and modified release of those names.
We can only hope it’s harmless error.