Two holdouts prevented Cosby guilty verdict, juror tells ABC

[June 22, 2017]    (Reuters) - Two holdout jurors prevented comedian Bill Cosby from being found guilty on two of three counts in his sexual assault trial and deliberations were so tense that jurors burst into tears, a jury member told ABC News in a report on Wednesday.

Only one juror thought the 79-year-old entertainer was guilty on the third charge, the jury member said in describing the 52 hours of deliberations that ended in a mistrial on Saturday.

Cosby is facing a second trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. The case is the only criminal prosecution to emerge from dozens of similar allegations against him. [nL1N1JE0A8]

Two jury members were "not moving, no matter what" on the first and third counts of aggravated sexual assault, said the juror, who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity.

The juror declined to identify the holdouts or detail how any jury member voted.

On the second count, that Constand was unconscious or unaware during the incident, the vote was 11 to one to acquit, the juror said.

The jury member told ABC News on Monday that jurors initially voted overwhelmingly in a non-binding poll to find Cosby not guilty on all counts.

The jury deadlocked after 30 hours of deliberations and there was no movement after that, the juror said, adding that the tension was heightened by the size of the tiny deliberation room.

"People couldn’t even pace,” the jury member said. “They were just literally walking in circles where they were standing because they were losing their minds.

"People would just start crying out of nowhere, we wouldn’t even be talking about (the case) - and people would just start crying.”

On Wednesday, Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven O'Neill released the names of the jurors and set strict limits on what they can tell the public about the deliberations.

One of the six alternate jurors has told a Pittsburgh radio station he would have voted to convict Cosby.

The original jury was brought across the state from Pittsburgh to Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, out of concern about the amount of pretrial publicity the case generated.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Joseph Ax in New York; Editing by Scott Malone, Toni Reinhold)

[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.