Cosby jurors identified after ‘cooling-off period’
Philadelphia Inquirer
NORRISTOWN, Pa. -The judge who presided over Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial has unsealed the names of the jurors who convicted the comedy icon but told them not to publicly discuss the deliberations that led to their decision last month.
Acting Friday on a petition from about a dozen media organizations – including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of the Inquirer, the Daily News and Philly.com – Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill acknowledged that the law requires that “the names of the jurors must be released.”
Still, his four-page order expressed concern, echoed by prosecutors, for the jurors’ privacy and cautioned that he might take action against any reporter who did not respect jurors’ wishes to be left alone.
“The privacy concerns of the jurors … are of paramount importance to this court,” Judge O’Neill wrote.
The judge’s ruling came more than 21 days after the media organizations filed their motion in court to overturn the sealing order Judge O’Neill had placed on the jurors’ identities before Mr. Cosby’s trial. In his opinion Friday, Judge O’Neill said that delay was intentional.
“The court has delayed the disclosure 21 days to provide a cooling off period, and to permit the jurors to return to their private lives,” he wrote.
At a hearing on the issue earlier this month, Judge O’Neill alleged that jurors had been perpetually harassed by reporters since they returned home after they found Mr. Cosby guilty on April 26 on three counts of aggravated indecent assault for his 2004 attack on Andrea Constand.
Many jurors reported television news trucks parked on the lawns of their homes, the judge said.
In a statement issued April 30 by the jury forewoman purporting to speak on behalf of the full panel of seven men and five women, the jurors asked for privacy and said none of them wished to talk publicly about the case.
Mr. Cosby, 80, is confined under a judge’s orders to his home outside Philadelphia until sentencing Sept. 24. He could face up to 10 years in prison for each count.