NORRISTOWN, Pa. _ As the jury at Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial continued its deliberations Tuesday, the entertainer's spokesman asserted that Cosby didn't get a fair trial because a key defense witness was blocked from testifying.
Addressing reporters on the Norristown courthouse steps, spokesman Andrew Wyatt read what he said was a statement from Marguerite Jackson, a Temple academic adviser, alleging that accuser Andrea Constand told her she intended to set up Cosby.
According to Wyatt, Constand told Jackson her plan was to "Get money, go to school and open up a business." He said Judge Steven O'Neill would not let the defense call Jackson to the witness stand.
"This court has not given (Cosby) a fair and impartial trial," Wyatt said. "That's all we were looking for. Just a fair shot."
Constand has said she has never met Jackson.
Wyatt said Cosby's spirits were up and he had confidence in the jury. Still, the public claim of an unfair trial before the panel has even rendered a verdict was one of the most unexpected turns in the weeklong trial.
It came after the panel of seven men and five women returned to the courtroom around 11:30 a.m. _ about six hours into their deliberations _ with its third question since attorneys closed their arguments.
Before leaving Monday night, the panel had asked Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill to read several portions of the testimony, including Cosby's statements on how he first met Constand, his romantic intentions toward her, past sexual encounters he described having with her and his own recollection of the 2004 night she says he drugged and assaulted her.
"I don't hear her say anything. And I don't feel her say anything," Cosby had testified about an early alleged liaison with Constand, in an excerpt read to jurors Tuesday. "So I continue, and I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I am not stopped."
Constand sat in the courtroom gallery's front row throughout the reading, her face set without expression and her eyes locked on the jury seated in front of her _ a sharp contrast from the beaming smile and warm hug she offered Assistant District Attorney Kristen Feden upon her arrival in the courtroom earlier in the day.
This is the second time that the panel of seven men and five women from Allegheny County has asked to re-hear excerpts of Cosby's 2005 testimony, which he gave as part of a lawsuit Constand filed against him more than a decade ago and later settled with the entertainer for a financial payout which remains undisclosed.
Just after they began their deliberations Monday, jurors asked to revisit a section of the transcript where Cosby described pills he gave to Constand the night of the alleged assault _ ones he contends were Benadryl.
"I told her to take it," Cosby testified in 2005. " 'I have three friends for you to make you relax.'"
His word choice was revisited in an excerpt re-read Tuesday.
"Why did you call them 'friends'?" Constand's lawyer Dolores Troiani asked, according to the deposition transcript. Cosby replied: "Because they might help take some of the stress and tension away."
The jury deliberated for four hours Monday night before retreating back to the hotel where they have been sequestered since the start of the trial. Earlier in the day, jurors heard impassioned closing arguments from each side, capping the entertainer's weeklong trial.
Prosecutors portrayed Constand as a brave victim seeking justice, while Cosby's lawyers claimed she was a former lover who fabricated her account of the alleged assault.
Cosby, 79, is charged with aggravated indecent assault for allegedly drugging and molesting Constand at his Cheltenham home in 2004.
