Juror's case of #MeWho?
Didn’t know Cos, but knows he’s guilty
The first of the Bill Cosby jurors to speak publicly said Monday he barely knew who the comedian was before the trial began — let alone what #MeToo is all about.
“I really didn’t know a lot. I knew he was an actor. I knew that he did ‘ The Cosby Show.’ I never watched ‘The Cosby Show.’ I’m a little too young for that,” Harrison Snyder, 22, told “Good Morning America.”
Snyder, who served as juror No. 1 on the panel that convicted Cosby last week of three counts of sexual assault, also knew very little about the allegations against the 80-year-old TV pioneer, who has been accused of drugging and molesting some 60 women over several decades.
“I didn’t know anything. I don’t watch the news ever. So I didn’t even know what he was on trial for,” said Snyder.
He added, “I really only found out about it after I got home. Then I looked online to see what everything was. I didn’t really even know about the #MeToo movement.”
But Snyder said Cosby’s fate was sealed by his own words, which were recorded in a 2005-’06 deposition in the lawsuit brought by chief accuser Andrea Constand.
“I think it was his deposition, really,” he said. “Mr. Cosby admitted to giving these Quaaludes to women, young women, in order to have sex with them.”
Snyder — who is the first of 12 jurors to publicly speak out about Cosby’s conviction last week — said he started off deliberations not knowing whether “America’s Dad” was guilty.
He made up his mind, however, after “hearing everyone’s comments about certain pieces of evidence and going through the different counts,” he said.
Cosby, who is now under house arrest, faces up to a 10year prison sentence for each of the three counts when he is sentenced. His lawyer Tom Mesereau has vowed to appeal.
Snyder also said he believed the testimony from Constand, who recalled in graphic detail how the comic gave her pills that made her pass out and how she woke up to him sexually assaulting her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
Five other accusers who took the stand, even though Cosby was not criminally charged with attacking them, were also credible, Snyder said. But he would have convicted Cosby without them.
“I don’t think it really neces- sarily mattered that these other five women were here,” Snyder said. “Because he said it himself that he used these drugs on other women.”
“So you found it to be his words that were the most damning of all?” asked ABC News reporter Linsey Davis “Yeah,” Snyder answered. The same Cosby deposition was played for jurors at his first trial last year, but they failed to reach a verdict. In that trial, the judge only allowed testimony from one other accuser.
Snyder said he has no doubts over the guilty verdict.
“Some have said that I made the right decision, and some people have said that they still think that he’s innocent,” he said. “And I just tell them, if you were there . . . you would say that he’s guilty.”