Bill Cosby’s trial on sexual assault charges ended in a mistrial on Saturday after jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision in a case that helped destroy the 79-year-old comedian’s image as “America’s Dad.”
Jurors deliberated for more than 52 hours over six days before telling a judge they could not agree on whether The Cosby Show star drugged and molested Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. The judge then declared a mistrial.
Prosecutors said they would retry Cosby, who remains charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault. He is free on $1 million bail.
Cosby’s team declared victory and went on the attack.
“Mr. Cosby’s power is back. It has been restored,” said Andrew Wyatt, his spokesman.
Cosby’s wife of 53 years, Camille, slammed prosecutors for bringing the case to court, calling district attorney Kevin Steele “heinously and exploitatively ambitious”. She also attacked the judge, the accuser’s lawyers and the media.
“How do I describe the judge? Overtly arrogant, collaborating with the district attorney,” she said in a statement, which was read by Mr Wyatt.
Cosby himself did not comment, remaining impassive as the judge declared a mistrial, while Ms Constand embraced her mother, prosecutors and some of the other women who say the TV star drugged and abused them.
The comedian’s career and good-guy image were already in tatters by the time his chief accuser took the stand and described how Cosby gave her pills and then assaulted her as she lay paralysed on a couch, unable to tell him to stop.
But the jurors clearly struggled with their verdict, telling the judge on Day 4 that they were at an impasse. Judge Steven O’Neill instructed them to keep working toward a unanimous decision. But on Saturday, they told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked. It is not known how many jurors wanted to convict Cosby and how many wanted to acquit him.
The judge reminded prosecutors and the defence that “a mistrial is neither vindication nor victory for anybody.”
It was the only criminal case to arise from allegations from more than 60 women that cast Cosby as a serial predator who gave drugs to women before violating them.
He did not take the stand in his own defence, leaving it to his attorney to argue Cosby and Constand were lovers sharing a consensual sexual encounter. Lawyer Brian McMonagle told jurors that while Cosby had been unfaithful to his wife, he did not commit a crime.
Cosby broke barriers as the first black actor to star in a network show, I Spy, in the 1960s and created the top-ranked Cosby Show two decades later, starring as kindly Dr. Cliff Huxtable. He found success with his Fat Albert animated TV show and starred in commercials for Jello-O pudding.
But it was his reputation as a public moralist who urged young people to pull up their baggy trousers and start acting responsibly that prompted a federal judge to unseal portions of an explosive deposition he gave more than a decade ago as part of Ms Constand’s civil lawsuit against him.
In the deposition, released in 2015, Cosby said he obtained several prescriptions for Quaaludes in the 1970s and offered the now-banned sedatives to women he wanted to have sex with.
He also said he gave Ms Constand three half-tablets of the cold and allergy medicine benadryl, although prosecutors suggested he drugged her with something stronger.
Ms Constand, 44, initially went to police about a year after she said Cosby assaulted her, but a prosecutor declared her case too weak to bring charges.
A decade later, a new district attorney reopened the investigation after Cosby’s lurid testimony about drugs and sex became public, and dozens of women came forward against one of the most beloved stars in all of show business. He was charged shortly before the statute of limitation was set to expire.
* Associated Press
