MISTRIAL
Cosby jury deadlocks on sex assault case
Camille rips DA, who vows retrial
BILL COSBY — the actor once known as “America’s Dad” — got a Father’s Day weekend reprieve after a Pennsylvania jury declared itself deadlocked Saturday on charges he had drugged and molested a woman.
But prosecutors vowed immediately to try the 79-year-old Cosby for a second time after the comedian’s long-awaited sexual assault trial ended in a mistrial.
The deadlocked jury spent 52 contentious hours across six days before throwing in the towel. There was no word on whether the verdict was derailed by a lone holdout or a deeper division.
Cosby — walking with a cane and waving to spectators outside the courthouse — remained mute as he exited the Norristown, Pa., building on $1 million bail.
But despite the impending retrial, the Cosby camp loudly claimed vindication when Judge Steven O’Neill dismissed the jury in the creepy case that dates to 2004.
Cosby’s wife Camille and his spokesman Andrew Wyatt fired shots at O’Neill, District Attorney Kevin Steele, an assortment of lawyers and the media.
“Mr. Cosby’s power’s back,” declared Wyatt as the comedian stood silently in the background. “It’s back. It has been restored. The jurors, they used their power to speak.
“So the legacy didn’t go anywhere. It has been restored. And all the lawyers who conspired like Gloria Allred, tell them to go back to law school and take another class.”
Cosby was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a women’s basketball team official at his alma mater — Temple University.
Camille Cosby, despite her husband’s confessed infidelities and admission to using Quaaludes as a tool to seduce women, issued a blistering statement that ignored her spouse’s misbehavior.
She instead attacked prosecutor Steele as “heinously and exploitively ambitious,” and ripped O’Neill for “overtly and arrogantly collaborating with the district attorney.
Lawyers for Constand and other alleged victims were dismissed by Camille Cosby as “totally unethical,” while she tore into the media for “selling sensationalism at the expense of a human life.”
The Cosbys were married in 1964, a year before the first accuser alleged the actor drugged her inside his California home.
Cosby, once the most powerful star on network television with “The Cosby Show,” opted not to testify at the trial or comment once it ended, but he did tweet Camille’s statement.
Constand, who hugged her mother, prosecutors and supporters when the mistrial was declared, agreed with the prosecution’s decision to take a second legal shot at Cosby.
Constand, now 44, will again take the stand to repeat her painful story about Cosby feeding her three pills that left her woozy and defenseless against his sexual advances.
“She has been positive in every way and continues to be, and she has indicated she will continue to cooperate with us,” said Steele. “And I look forward to her getting a verdict in the case.”
The man who famously drew a huge Thursday night TV audience as Dr. Cliff Huxtable still faces three counts of aggravated indecent assault, each with a sentencing range of five-to-10 years.
The weary-faced jurors, who initially announced they were at an impasse on Thursday, left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
One appeared near tears before leaving as O’Neill thanked them for their service.
“I feel bad for you, I really do,” said the judge. “A mistrial is neither vindication nor victory for anybody.”
Several of Cosby’s other accusers turned up in the courtroom on a daily basis to offer their support for Constand.
Prosecutors have up to a year to begin a second Cosby trial.
“It’s my understanding that it’s really a do-over,” Steele said of the retrial. “We start back from where we began, going through each of those steps.”
Cosby was arrested on the abuse charges in December 2015, just days before the 12-year statute of limitations on the incident would have expired.
Cosby, in a deposition, acknowledged giving Constand three Benadryl pills before initiating sexual contact inside his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. The comedian said the drug was intended to relax Constant prior to a consensual sexual encounter.
Constand testified across seven intense hours on the witness stand that Cosby slipped her something more powerful — leaving her powerless to fend off his unwanted groping.
She fought back tears while describing her shocking violation by the star who was a respected trustee at Temple University, where she was head of women’s
Jury couldn’t agree
basketball operations.
“I wasn’t able to fight in any way,” testified Constand. “I wanted it to stop.”
Cosby’s once-sterling reputation was already severely tarnished with the unsealing of his damaging deposition testimony in Constand’s civil suit.
In his own words, Cosby admitted to cheating on his wife Camille and obtaining seven prescriptions for Quaaludes so he could give the now-banned sedative to women he hoped to seduce.
Despite the drama and the nodecision, a lawyer for Constand said she’s on board with the retrial decision.
“She’s ready to go again,” said attorney Dolores Troiani. “She’s a very spiritual woman, she believes things happen for a purpose, and I think the purpose is . . . it should encourage other women to come forward and have their day in court.”
In her only public statement Saturday night, Constand tweeted a quote from yogi Paramahansa Yogananda: “It doesn’t matter if a cave has been in darkness for 10,000 years or half an hour, once you light a match it is illuminated.”