Two holdouts in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial refused to convict him, per ABC News.
The comedian had been charged in 2015 with three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault stemming from a 2004 incident involving Andrea Constand at his home in Pennsylvania. The juror, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said 10 of the 12 jurors thought he was guilty on the first and third felony count; one juror thought he was guilty on the second count.
Constand testified during the six-day trial that Cosby gave her a drug that prevented her from stopping his alleged assault. Though Cosby did not take the stand, he said in a decade-old deposition that he gave Benadryl to Constand to "relax" her, and then they had a consensual sexual encounter. The 79-year-old pleaded not guilty to the felony charge and categorically denied the other accusations made against him. After 52 hours of deliberations, the holdouts were "not moving, no matter what," the juror said, so Judge Steven O'Neill declared a mistrial.
ABC News published its interview with the juror Wednesday night after O'Neill ordered the public release of the jurors' names, granting requests made by at least a dozen media entities. The judge had warned jurors—seven men and five women—not to discuss their deliberations.
The jury was deadlocked after about 30 hours of deliberations over four days, but after O'Neill read a "dynamite" charge, they kept trying for another 22 hours. The juror said the extra time did not make a difference, and emotions ran high as deliberations wore on in a cramped room. "People couldn't even pace," the juror 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."
At one point, according to the juror, tensions became so high that a male juror punched the concrete wall of the jury room. "I think he broke his pinky knuckle," the juror said. "If we kept going, there was definitely going to be a fight. They had five sheriff's deputies at the door and they could hear us and they kept coming in because they thought we were already fighting."
Today, the juror said, they all speak to each other by text and phone regularly.
Meanwhile, District Attorney Kevin Steele has said that he will retry Cosby.
O'Neill he wants the retrial to happen within four months.