The Jury In Bill Cosby's Sexual Assault Trial Is Deadlocked
Update, June 15: Jury Is Deadlocked
The jury in Bill Cosby's sex assault trial has informed the judge that it is unable to reach consensus on a verdict.
Jurors in the Bill Cosby criminal trial told the judge Thursday afternoon, "We cannot come to a unanimous consensus on any of the counts." Judge Steven T. O'Neill said he considered them deadlocked but sent them back to keep trying.
The jury has been deliberating since Monday night and now has been at it for more than 30 hours.
[Jezebel]
Update, June 12: Defense Rests After Calling One Witness To Testify
The prosecution in the Bill Cosby sex assault trial spent a week building its case against the actor and comedian, calling 12 witnesses to the stand, including two women who say Cosby assaulted them. (Scroll down for more on the prosecution's witnesses.) In a shocking turn of events today, the defense called only one witness to the stand and then rested its case after a mere six minutes.
Bill Cosby's attorneys raced through a startlingly brief, six-minute defense Monday, bringing to a close testimony in one of the most high-profile criminal cases in recent American history.
Cosby and his wife, Camille — who made her first appearance at the courthouse Monday — watched as defense attorney Brian McMonagle called a single police witness to confirm the existence of a police report.
Both sides will now present their closing arguments, and then the jury will begin deliberations.
Here's what else you need to know about legal case against the the disgraced entertainer.
Background On The Trial
Sixty Women Have Accused Cosby Of Sexual Assault
The Washington Post has compiled a thorough list detailing the circumstances of each of the alleged assaults, many of which happened long enough ago that the statute of limitations for criminal charges has expired.
[T]he legacy of Bill Cosby has been reshaped by the accusations of at least 60 women who have said he raped or sexually harassed them between the mid-1960s and the late 2000s, including dozens who say he drugged them before the alleged assaults. The accusations span the continent: 19 cities, 11 states and one foreign country, Canada…
About two-thirds of the allegations involve drugging and follow a similar pattern, with Cosby allegedly offering the women pills or drinks and the women saying they wake up naked in bed with Cosby after blacking out.
This Month's Trial Is About A Single Assault That Allegedly Happened In 2004
Andrea Constand, Cosby's alleged victim and the central witness in the trial, met Cosby when she was the director of operations for the women's basketball team at Temple University, Cosby's alma mater.
Constand and Cosby met in 2001 at a women's basketball game at Temple when Cosby served on Temple's Board of Trustees (he has since resigned). Constand says she had frequented Cosby's Elkins Park mansion for dinner parties and private dinners during her time at Temple when Cosby offered to give her career advice. Despite being in a relationship with another woman at the time of the incident, Constand says she doesn't think Cosby knew she was gay.
[Vulture]
Constand says the assault occurred one night in January or February 2004 at Cosby's mansion outside Philadelphia.
When Ms. Constand, then 30, complained she was tense, she said Mr. Cosby, then 66, went upstairs, returning with three blue pills. She said he told her they were an herbal remedy for stress and urged her to take them.
(He would later describe the pills as Benadryl, one-half tab, and a second full one that he had split into two halves.)
She swallowed them, remembers sipping wine, and soon after, she told investigators, her vision went blurry and she couldn't talk. He helped her to the sofa, where she said she was then sexually assaulted.
"I was unable to move my body," she told the police. "I was pretty much frozen."
Cosby Gave Sworn Testimony About The Alleged Assault For A Civil Suit In 2005
Constand sued Cosby for damages in 2005, and in a resulting deposition Cosby opened up about his modus operandi for targeting young women, including Constand.
Far from being reluctant, Cosby often speaks expansively about his sexual encounters, including his contact with Constand when he was in his mid-60s and she was in her late 20s and early 30s. While describing his attempt to seduce Constand, he balks when her attorney interrupts.
"Don't rush it," he says before continuing to describe a scene in which he eventually pulls back Constand's hair and bids her to press her body against his.
The civil suit was later settled, and Cosby's deposition remained sealed until journalists sought to have it unsealed in 2015.
Cosby's Unsealed Deposition Played A Role In Prosecutors' Decision To Press Charges Against Him
In 2005, before the civil suit played out, a district attorney declined to bring charges against Cosby in the Constand case. But after Cosby's deposition was unsealed in 2015, a new district attorney decided to reopen the case.
The timeline of how the case almost went away forever, then came roaring back to life, was laid out in a police affidavit made public… along with the first criminal charges against the iconic entertainer…
According to the affidavit, these damning statements, as well as the public claims of assault made by other women, compelled District Attorney Risa Vetri Furman to reopen the criminal investigation closed by her predecessor.
What Happened Last Week
Cosby Appeared At Court On Monday Accompanied By A Former 'Cosby Show' Costar
Cosby showed up to court on Monday with a familiar face: actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, best known for playing his youngest TV daughter Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show. Cosby's lawyers had said part of their legal strategy would be to bring in "sympathetic voices" who would support Cosby, and it appears that more of his Cosby Show family will be in attendance. Cosby's spokesperson tells People that Cosby's TV wife Phylicia Rashad will appear at the trial.
[The Cut]
The Prosecution's Opening Statement Recounted Constand's Description Of The Assault
Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kristen Feden graphically described the alleged assault in her opening statement to jurors.
"He touched her breast. He grabbed her limp hand, and placed it on his penis, and masturbated himself with her hand… he shoves his penis into her vagina," Feden told jurors. "All the while this is happening, Andrea Constand can't move. She can't talk. She is completely paralyzed, frozen. Lifeless."
Feden walked over to Cosby and told jurors that he "used his power and his fame and his previously practiced method of placing a young, trusting woman into an incapacitated state so that he could sexually pleasure himself. So that she couldn't say no because she was incapacitated. She couldn't say no."
[Jezebel]
Cosby's Defense Lawyers Called False Accusations 'The Only Thing That Is Worse Than' Sexual Assault
" data-reactid="33″ class="">Brian McMonagle, an attorney for Cosby's defense, countered that Constand was "repeatedly untruthful" to the officers that investigated her claims in 2005. Occasionally shouting, McMonagle portrayed that 2005 investigation as an exhaustive interrogation of the facts that failed to turn up evidence of an assault." data-reactid="34″ class="ui-sortable-handle">[The Guardian]" data-reactid="34″ class="">"I believe now that the only thing that is worse than [a sexual assault] is a false accusation of sexual assault," McMonagle said. "A false accusation of sexual assault, it's an attack … on human innocence. It's not a distraction, it can destroy a man. It's not a distraction. It can destroy his life. It can destroy his future."
A Separate Alleged Cosby Victim, Kelly Johnson, Described Her Assault On The Witness Stand
The prosecution called Kelly Johnson, previously identified only as 'Kacey,' to the stand with the intent of showing that Cosby had a pattern of drugging and assaulting women.
Kelly Johnson, an assistant to Cosby's personal-appearances agent at the William Morris agency in the 1990s, wept while recounting an afternoon in 1996 when she said the comedian summoned her to his bungalow at the swanky Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles…
When she arrived, Johnson testified, Cosby was wearing a bathrobe. He urged her to take a white pill to relax, she said, opening her right hand on the witness stand to mimic the offer.
"Would I do anything to hurt you?" she said Cosby told her. "Trust me." …
Moments later, she said, she awoke in bed with Cosby, her dress pulled down from its top and up from its hem, exposing her breasts and her genitals. Cosby, she said, poured lotion into her hand and forced her to stroke his penis.
Kelly Johnson's Mother And Former Lawyer Corroborated Johnson's Story
Earlier Tuesday, another prosecution witness, Pattrice Sewell, testified in support of her daughter's sexual-assault allegations against the entertainer. Sewell said her daughter, Kelly Johnson, who worked for the Cosby's personal appearances agent, "was very proud to introduce us to Mr. Cosby." …
Prosecutors also got a significant boost from testimony late Tuesday morning by Joseph Miller, an attorney involved in a workers' compensation claim filed by Johnson in the 1990s. Miller, a former chief workers' compensation appellate judge for the state of California, testified in graphic detail about what Johnson alleged about the incident with Cosby. Important for the prosecution, his memory of Johnson's allegations precisely matched the former talent agency worker's testimony the day before.
Andrea Constand Took The Stand To Describe The Alleged Assault
Constand cried on Tuesday as she described her experience after Cosby gave her three pills and a glass of wine.
"He said 'These will help you relax,'" she said. "'They are your friends. They will take the edge off.'"
Her voice catching and her eyes tearing, Ms. Constand said she took the pills and then felt disoriented, telling Mr. Cosby, "I see two of you," before losing consciousness.
"I was jolted awake and I felt Mr. Cosby's hand groping my breasts under my shirt," she said. "I also felt his hand inside my vagina moving in and out, and I felt him take my hand and place it on his penis and move it back and forth."
A Cosby Lawyer, Angela Agrusa, Focused On Constand's Continued Contact With Cosby After The Attack
In her cross-examination of Constand, Agrusa tried to prove that she'd remained friendly with Cosby after the alleged assault.
Agrusa reserved her strongest attacks for how Constand responded in the months after the alleged assault. Although Constand initially told investigators that she cut off contact with Cosby in the months that followed, phone records produced by the defense showed 72 phone calls between them, 53 that Constand had initiated. That number included one 2005 call to Cosby minutes before she called her mother to tell her about the alleged assault for the first time.
For the most part, however, Constand said Tuesday, she had to maintain contact with him for her job. Most of the calls she placed to him were returning messages he had left for her from different phone numbers, she told the jury.
Constand first told police about the alleged assault about a year after it happened, and she initially gave them the wrong date. Agrusa picked at this discrepancy in her timeline on Wednesday.
Constand acknowledged today that she had initially told police that the alleged sexual assault took place in March of 2014 and not two months earlier, as she testified Tuesday.
She initially said she went to Cosby's house and was assaulted after a dinner out with other people. She clarified today that Cosby had called and invited her to his Pennsylvania house for dinner.
"Once you got hold of your phone records and realized you cannot have been passed out … the night you told police you changed your story?" defense attorney Angela Agrusa asked.
[ABC News]
Constand's Mother, Gianna, Also Took The Stand
On Wednesday, Gianna Constand described two phone calls she had with Cosby after he allegedly assaulted her daughter. In one, Cosby apologized and told Mrs. Constand that her daughter had had an orgasm during the encounter. In the other, which the jury heard a recording of, Cosby offered to pay for Andrea Constand's schooling.
She held a hand over her face and cried, as she described Mr. Cosby's "betrayal." She spoke of him as a man who was her daughter's mentor, a man older than Andrea's own father. Mr. Cosby, she said, drugged and assaulted Andrea, leaving her with nightmares that made her scream. "I could hear her," she said.
A Police Sergeant, Richard Schaffer, Testified About His 2005 Interview Of Cosby
During a 2005 police investigation of the alleged assault, Cosby reportedly told Police Sergeant Richard Schaffer that he'd engaged in consensual "petting" with Constand.
Earlier on Thursday, Cheltenham Township Police Sgt. Richard Schaffer testified about his interview of Cosby in 2005 after Constand reported the encounter. Cosby told him he did not have sex with Constand the night in question nor at any other time. Instead, he said, they engaged in petting and she did not rebuff him.
Schaffer said he was surprised when the prosecutor he was working with announced that the 2005 investigation was closed.
[A] detective who investigated Constand's claim in 2005 suggested he and other investigators were caught off guard when Montgomery County's chief prosecutor at the time abruptly announced the shutdown of the probe.
Cheltenham Police Sgt. Richard Schaffer said detectives had just met to discuss "investigative leads and where we were going" on that February day when District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. publicly announced he would not bring charges.
Jurors Heard Excerpts From Cosby's Damning 2005 Civil Deposition
The deposition, which Cosby's lawyers tried to get the judge to exclude from the trial, was a chief reason prosecutors reopened the case against Cosby in 2015.
[P]rosecutors were not able to get far enough into the deposition to hear Mr. Cosby discuss his use of the drugs. Instead, jurors heard Mr. Cosby's deposition testimony about the beginnings of his romantic interest in Ms. Constand, with whom he says he had a consensual sexual relationship, and his version of the night of the alleged assault.
Under questioning in the despostion, he clarified what he meant by pursuing a romantic interest. "Romance in terms of steps that will lead to some kind of permission or no permission," he said.
In the deposition, Cosby implied that he took Constand's silence as consent during the alleged assault.
"I don't hear her say anything. And I don't feel her say anything," Cosby testified then about a liaison with Constand prior to the alleged attack. "I don't feel her say anything. And so I continue to go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped."
On Friday, a witness read a section of Cosby's deposition that touched on the nature of the pills Cosby gave Constand.
On Friday morning, the prosecutors continued reading through Mr. Cosby's deposition in the civil suit, focusing on a section where Mr. Cosby was questioned about his reluctance to specify exactly what kind of pills he had given Ms. Constand at his home.
Ms. Constand has testified that Mr. Cosby told her that night that the three pills were an herbal remedy. Mr. Cosby later said he gave her Benadryl. But prosecutors have suggested it was indeed a much more powerful substance, like a quaalude.
An Expert Witness Testified That Sex Assault Victims Often Delay Going To Police And Stay In Touch With Their Attackers
Clinical psychologist Veronique Valliere sought to explain why Constand's account of the assault wasn't always consistent.
Valliere testified that victims initially may be confused about a sexual assault, because often such assaults are not physically violent. They may be intimidated by the attacker, she said. They might engage in counter-intuitive behavior by reaching out to the attacker in an attempt to achieve a "sense of clarity." Such attempts can be futile, she said.
The victim "might ask, 'Is this somebody I depend on? Is this somebody who can retaliate and hurt me, either physically or professionally?' " she said.
