After Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury, many people were outraged but sadly not surprised.
Like, we’d all like to believe that 12 random people off the street would know that serial sexual assault of at least 58 women is illegal and also bad, but we’ve all seen full-on acquittals for famous cases that seemed airtight.
Now a juror is speaking out about where the blame for the deadlock lies.
As it turns out, just two of Bill Cosby’s jurors were holdouts responsible for the deadlock.
Honestly, that’s more disheartening than just one holdout.
All of the jurors’ names will eventually be released.
Though hopefully people will be able to hold back their torches and pitchforks and avoid targeting them.
Especially before we know who voted for what.
And, honestly, voir dire is an aggressively imperfect process that can let people with poor judgment through.
Not to mention people with agendas who don’t tell anyone that they want to be on the jury for reasons other than civic duty or justice.
According to this anonymous juror, 10 of the jurors out of 12 agreed that Cosby was guilty of digitally penetrating Andrea Constand without her consent.
They also agreed that there was sufficient evidence to prove that he had given her drugs without her knowledge so that she wouldn’t be able to resist.
Apparently they struggled with the third charge of the indictment, because only one of them was fully convinced at the beginning that the evidence proved that Andrea Constand was unaware during the assault.
It sounds like most of the jurors took their job very seriously, which is proper.
It sounds frustrating — to perhaps believe something but to be unsure if the evidence proves it conclusively — but that’s what jurors are supposed to do.
According to the juror, they were all initially unconvinced that the evidence proved the charges at the start of deliberations.
Over time, however, they came around to generally agree that the pieces of evidence fit together to make real proof.
But, 30 hours into their 52 hours of deliberations, the jury deadlocked.
And, according to this juror, that remained the case for the remaining 22 hours.
We don’t yet know enough to say whether the two holdouts were honest jurors who took their jobs very seriously.
Because there’s always a chance that, in a trial like this, some people with definite ideas about who did what or who’s “being framed” would sneak onto the jury.
We’ve only heard from this one juror so far.
We’re sure that some others may have more to say.
And prosecutors will be listening, because they’ve pledged to try Cosby again.
They’ll want to know exactly what did or did not convince jurors and tailor their approach to avoid another deadlock.
No matter what, the mistrial is going to be tough.
Poor Andrea Constand has already been through enough, don’t you think?
She tweeted out her thanks to people for their support.
She managed to sound optimistic despite the deadlock.
Andrea Constand is clearly a very strong person.
It’s important to remember that prosecutors can and probably will keep trying him until they get a verdict, one way or the other.
Cosby still has 10 suits pending against him.
There are very real concerns, though, that he might not live to see all of the legal cases against him to their conclusions.
While that sounds like a victory to his opponents, it might not give his alleged victims the closure that they need.
