By Carl Hessler Jr.chessler@21st-centurymedia.com
@MontcoCourtNews on TwitterNORRISTOWN >> Montgomery County prosecutors vowed to retry Bill Cosby after a jury announced it was “hopelessly deadlocked” and could not reach a verdict at the actor’s sexual assault trial.
“We will evaluate and review our case. We will take a hard look at everything involved and then we will retry it. As I said in court, our plan is to move this case forward as soon as possible,” District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said at a news conference after a mistrial was declared at Cosby’s trial.
The mistrial was declared Saturday by Judge Steven T. O’Neill after the seven men and five women on the jury individually told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked “on all counts” after deliberating more than 52 hours over six days.
“A mistrial is simply the justice system at work,” O’Neill reminded everyone and thanked jurors and urged them not to feel that they let the justice system down.
O’Neill reminded Cosby, 79, that the three counts of aggravated indecent assault remain intact and that he will remain free on 10 percent of $1 million bail, pending the retrial, which some hinted may occur within 120 days. Cosby faces a possible maximum sentence of 15 to 30 years in prison if convicted of the charges.
William Henry Cosby Jr., as his name appears on charging documents, remained calm but appeared tired as the mistrial was declared.
Defense lawyers Brian J. McMonagle and Angela C. Agrusa thanked the jury from Pittsburgh for its hard work.
“They came here and deliberated long and hard over days, 52 hours of deliberations. The judge is right, justice is real and it lives here in Montgomery County. I’m proud to have been able to represent Mr. Cosby. We came here looking for an acquittal but like that Rolling Stones song says, ‘You don’t always get what you want, sometimes you get what you need,” McMonagle said as he stood under the portico of the courthouse with Cosby.
Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, the former director of women’s basketball operations at Temple University, at his Cheltenham mansion in mid-January 2004.
“We felt really good about this case. We are confident in the case that we put on. There’s always tweaks and we can always do things better so that will be a self-assessment that we’ll go through,” Steele added.
The 11-day trial was expected to come at a high cost for the county. Cost figures for overtime for sheriff’s deputies and court employees and for the sequestration of the jury are not yet available.
“You can’t put a price tag on justice,” Steele said.
Steele said Constand “has shown such courage through this” and is prepared to move forward with a retrial. Constand did not appear at the news conference.
“She has been positive in every way and continues to be and she has indicated she will continue to cooperate with us,” said Steele, who was flanked by co-prosecutors Kristen Feden and M. Stewart Ryan, as well as Cheltenham and county detectives. “She’s entitled to a verdict in this case and the citizens of Montgomery County, where this crime occurred, are entitled to a verdict in this case and we will push forward to try to get that done.”
The nature of the split among the jurors was not revealed.
“We have no indication of where anybody was on the case and I don’t know that we will ever know,” Steele said.
Although prosecutors were disappointed that the jury was not able to come to a unanimous verdict they said they appreciated the sacrifices the jurors made.
“We got to try our case,” Steele said.
Steele said some good things came out of the trial, most significantly, that Constand was able to face Cosby in court and tell her story.
“Too often these types of crimes, sexual assaults, do not get reported, especially cases where a drug has been used in a drug-facilitated sexual assault,” Steele said. “So we hope doing this and moving forward in this case sends a strong message that victims of these types of crimes can come forward and be heard.”
The jurors, who were selected in Pittsburgh due to pretrial publicity in the Montgomery County region, listened to five days of testimony and deliberated for six. On Thursday, jurors announced they were deadlocked.
But O’Neill gave them a special instruction required by law and sent them back to deliberate to see if they could settle their differences and reach a verdict. The jurors did not mention anything about the deadlock again until Saturday when they announced they were “hopelessly deadlocked” and that the deadlock could not be resolved by additional deliberations.
During their deliberations, jurors sent a string of questions to the judge, asking to rehear the testimonies of five trial witnesses and Cosby’s previous deposition testimony. There were a total of 12 trial witnesses.
McMonagle had sought a mistrial seven times during the deliberation phase, arguing jurors were asking to review the entire trial. But O’Neill said as long as the jury wished to deliberate he would allow them to do so. The jurors apparently decided Saturday that they had had enough.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged Cosby was a trusted friend and mentor who took advantage of a woman in a “vulnerable state,” plied Constand with “three blue pills” and sexually assaulted her at his Cheltenham mansion in mid-January 2004.
Constand, 44, of Ontario, Canada, testified over two days that after taking the blue pills she began slurring her words and became “frozen” or paralyzed and was unable to fight off Cosby’s sexual advances. Constand claimed Cosby placed her on a couch, touched her breasts, forced her to touch his penis and performed digital penetration all without her consent.
But McMonagle and Agrusa argued Cosby was the victim of false accusations and that the entertainer and Constand had a “romantic relationship” and consensual sexual contact during the 2004 incident. At one point during the trial, McMonagle stood beside Cosby and suggested to jurors that while Cosby may have been an unfaithful husband, that didn’t make him a criminal.
