Norristown, Pa.
As the mistrial was declared, Cosby sat at the defense table with his chin held high, a flat, blank look on his face. Across the well of the courtroom, jurors stood one-by-one in the jury box and said, “Yes,” as Judge Steven T. O’Neill asked each whether they agreed that the jury is “hopelessly deadlocked.” The jurors answered without hesitation, but several slumped forward in their chairs, elbows on their knees and fingers knit, looks of frustration on their faces.
After the questioning was done, the entertainer sat back in his chair, holding to his chest a slender cane that has been with him inside the courtroom each day. The jury filed out almost within arm’s reach of Andrea Constand, Cosby’s accuser. She stood respectfully, with a strained smile on her face. Afterward, the prosecutor, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, announced in court that he will retry Cosby. Constand has already told him she is willing to testify again at a retrial. In the next 120 days, O’Neill will schedule a new trial to be held sometime in the next 12 months.
The courtroom emptied quickly, but the two main players in this 11-day melodrama lingered. Constand, in the brilliantly white, lightweight blazer she had worn on the witness stand, stood along the edge of the courtroom wall. Six accusers who had attended the trial as spectators, some with tears in their eyes, lined up to console her with long, sad hugs. The former professional basketball player’s face was flushed, but her eyes were dry.
Across the courtroom, a small entourage of Cosby aides broke into wide smiles and clapped each other on the back. Amid the celebration, the 79-year-old comic sat by himself at his regular spot at the defense table. No one from his family was there to share the moment, and the members of his defense team and support staff had turned their attention elsewhere.
Cosby, knowing that he will be tried again, looked pensive as he sat tilted forward with his legs spread wide and his eyes cast to the floor. He draped a long finger across his upper lip, and for several minutes was alone with his thoughts. Then, his expression changed. For a split second, a smile crossed his face.
Finally, one of his lawyers, Angela Agrusa, spied him sitting there alone, and went over to offer her arm. They walked down the center aisle of the courtroom together, weaving through journalists and celebratory Cosby aides. But the path was blocked, and they had to stop.
Cosby and his lawyer paused momentarily.
“You lead the way,” Cosby said to Agrusa.
Outside the courthouse, Cosby’s publicist thrust a fist in the air triumphantly as the comedian made his way down a ramp flanked by metal barricades and a leafy hedge in the rain. A handful of supporters chanted “Let Bill go” as Cosby was helped into an idling, black SUV. Cosby turned for a moment to a crowd in which journalists outnumbered supporters at least 25 to 1. Then he was gone.
A member of Cosby’s PR team also read a scathing statement from the comedian’s wife, Camille, in which she called Steele “heinously and exploitatively ambitious” and the lawyers for Cosby’s accusers “unethical.” She also dismissed O’Neill as “overtly arrogant” and unspecified members of the media as “blatantly vicious.”
The jurors, who had complained of exhaustion, deliberated 52 hours before finally saying they could not reach a verdict on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against the entertainer. But the hung jury does not end Cosby’s legal troubles. He will be retried and still is facing lawsuits filed by some of the 60 women who have accused him of sexual assault, rape or sexual harassment.
As deliberations dragged on, signs of discontent in the jury room kept emerging. The jurors — who had been kept working for 12- and 13-hour days by O’Neill, the Montgomery County judge overseeing the case, since beginning their cloistered discussions Monday afternoon — asked to go back to the hotel early Tuesday. The next day, they expressed “concerns” to court officials, though the judge did not reveal the substance of their complaints.
Late Thursday morning, just after passing the 30-hour mark in deliberations, jurors formally announced for the first time that they were deadlocked — in a one-sentence note saying they could not reach a “unanimous consensus” on any of the counts. The judge gave the standard order to keep trying, but they were ultimately unable to break the deadlock.