2 holdouts saved Cos, juror says
DEFIES JUDGE’S GAG ORDER ON DELIBERATIONS IN SEX ASSAULT TRIAL
TEN OF THE 12 jurors on Bill Cosby’s sex-assault trial reportedly wanted to convict the disgraced comedian — a revelation one of his accusers found heartening.
Jewel Allison, one of Cosby’s alleged victims, told the Daily News on Wednesday that the split left her optimistic.
“It makes me hopeful. I am very hopeful. We were so close,” said Allison, 54, who regularly attended the suburban Philadelphia trial that ended with a hung jury on Saturday.
Just two lone holdouts refused to budge during 52 hours of marathon deliberations, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial, a juror who asked to remain anonymous told ABC News.
“(The holdouts were) not moving, no matter what,” the unidentified panelist revealed.
The jury reportedly deadlocked on the charges alleging Cosby drugged chief accuser Andrea Constand with something that impaired her ability to resist and then penetrated her with his finger without consent.
On the charge that Cosby assaulted Constand while she was unconscious or unaware what was occurring — count No. 2 — the jury vote was 11 to one to acquit, the juror told ABC.
The new insight into the sequestered jury’s grueling week of debate seemed to refute the Cosby camp’s claim that the outcome proved the actor’s innocence.
Allison, a Brooklyn poet, said she had a strong hunch that the jury had only one or two members pushing for acquittal.
“To sit in the courtroom and actually listen to the case, it was clear to me that he gave (Constand) something with the intention of having her incapacitated so he could take advantage of her sexually,” Allison (below) told The News. “The prosecution presented its case in such a powerful and concise manner, and I thought the only thing that would impede upon a conviction would be sexism and celebrity,” she said. Allison, a former model, first broke her silence in November 2014 in an interview with The News. She said her agent, Sue Charney sent her to dinner at Cosby’s East Side brownstone in the late 1980s, and Cosby presented himself as a mentor figure who could help her career.
During another dinner a short time later, Cosby fed her wine that “tasted awful” and caused her to feel woozy and ill, she told The News.
She said Cosby took her hand and placed it on his genitals.
Allison said Wednesday she hopes a second jury will convict, but she’s more aware than ever that so much depends on juror attitudes.
“When you have a jury pool of women and men of different age groups and races, we’re not all on the same page. And we have to get on the same page,” she said.
“We still live in a society in which women are portrayed as sex objects. And we’re not Barbie dolls for men to play with sexually,” she said.
Wednesday’s jury revelations came just hours after Montgomery County, Pa., Judge Steven O’Neill unsealed the jurors’ names but ordered them to remain mum on the votes of other panelists.
The guidelines from the judge seemed designed to both protect jurors from an onslaught of media requests and put a chill on any interviews that willing jurors might grant.
Attempts to reach the seven men and five women on the panel were not successful.