Cosby jury seeks to understand ‘reasonable doubt’ as deliberations in sexual assault trial extend to fifth day

NORRISTOWN, Pa. – After percolating out of sight, the subject of a mistrial in the Bill Cosby sexual assault case burst into open court Friday.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill challenged Cosby’s lead lawyer on a mistrial motion as a deadlocked jury deliberated into its fifth day. Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault of former Temple University basketball staffer Andrea Constand in 2004.

“You made motions for mistrial. And as you make them it appears the court is being ignorant to you,” O’Neill said to the defense lawyer, Brian McMonagle, in the Norristown, Pa., courtroom. “I have no ability to do anything but what I’ve done.”

McMonagle argued that it was fruitless to continue deliberations.

“What we got now is jurors trying to overcome other jurors by reading testimony in the case,” he said. “We’re well past the point of free will.”

McMonagle’s issue was the length of the deliberations over several days this week – they approached 45 hours Friday afternoon – as well as jurors asking for extensive recounting of testimony.

But O’Neill, who denied the mistrial motion, shot those arguments down.

“Get me the law that supports what your rhetoric keeps fostering,” he said. As long as the jury is deliberating he could and would not stop them, and would consider declaring a mistrial only after the jury returned with another deadlock.

O’Neill called the jury into the courtroom and asked them to keep working and let him know if they had reached a stalemate.

O’Neill referred to four previous mistrial bids made in chambers. He moved this one to open court, he said, because he wanted the public and press to be aware he was not pushing the jury to do anything they weren’t already doing.

O’Neill had appeared impatient Thursday night after a news conference by Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt exhorting the judge to call a mistrial.

Earlier Friday, O’Neill addressed Cosby on the issue of mistrial, an unconventional address observers believed was a response to the Wyatt press conference. In talking to Cosby, O’Neill alluded to issues being “explain(ed) out in the media” and wanting to “understand the decision for requesting a mistrial is yours and yours alone.”

He also said to Cosby: “Your counsel has now made a number of motions for mistrial. Let me make sure you understand” what’s at stake. He then asked the entertainer a series of questions on whether he had freely given his approval.

“Every time Mr. McMonagle says (mistrial) I am understanding that you are consenting to what he has said,” O’Neill said. Cosby answered the yes-or-no questions emphatically from his defendant’s chair.

Separately, jurors requested the judge define reasonable doubt.

“What is reasonable doubt? (The definition),” came the jury request.

The question suggested the panel was bogged down in whether the defense had cast enough legal doubt on the prosecution’s case that Cosby assaulted Constand.

O’Neill then read the definition, which included a doubt that would cause a “reasonable person” to “hesitate before acting on a matter of importance” as well as a doubt that was not “manufactured to avoid the carrying out of an unpleasant duty.”

The jury also requested that the judge read aloud portions of deposition testimony from the trial involving Cosby’s past purchase of Quaaludes to facilitate sex with women.

“Was it in your mind you were going to use the Quaaludes for young women, plural, that you were going to have sex with?” a questioner had asked.

“Yes,” he had said, noting that Quaaludes “happened to be the drug that young people, kids were partying with and I wanted to have it just in case.”

It was the first significant request by the jury to review a piece of testimony that did not specifically concern the night of the Constand encounter, suggesting jurors were trying to widen their scope as they sought to break their stalemate.

O’Neill continued to press them to find a verdict.

“I hope you are well-rested,” he told jurors. “Your form of questions does indicate you are deliberating, which is exactly what the court (wants).”