NORRISTOWN, Pa._The jury in the Bill Cosby sexual-assault trial convened Tuesday for its second day of deliberations.
Jurors had asked a question before adjourning Monday night regarding portions of a civil deposition Cosby gave more than a decade ago that was read
On Tuesday morning, Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill re-read those sections, which cover when Cosby first met Andrea Constand through the night several years later when he gave her pills and, she says, assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home.
Cosby looked engaged as the testimony was re-read and even seemed to smile hearing a joke he had made about why he had given Constand a particular phone number. When the judge finished, the jury retired to the deliberation room in the Norristown courthouse.
Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault for an incident at his home in January 2004 involving Constand, a former Temple University basketball staffer. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison on each count.
Constand says she was drugged and "frozen" during the encounter, which involved digital penetration. Cosby said in the deposition that the interaction was consensual.
The jury Tuesday morning also asked the judge to define "without the knowledge" of the victim in the sexual-assault count pertaining to the administering of an intoxicant.
The question appeared to address whether that would also include someone who voluntarily took pills without asking what they were, as Cosby said happened. (Constand testified that she had asked what the pills were and he had told her they were herbal, when they were in fact either Benadryl or something stronger.)
In the afternoon, the jury returned with another question, seeking to hear the testimony of the Canadian officer who was the first to interview the alleged victim when she reported the incident in 2005. Constand was living in Canada, her native country, after leaving Philadelphia.
The officer, Dave Mason, provided a much earlier view than other accounts of the night of the alleged assault at Cosby's home. According to Mason's account of the interview, Constand at that time was characterizing the alleged assault as happening after a restaurant dinner she and Cosby had with administrators of a local high school, not a private meal at Cosby's home. (She later revised that detail.) The inconsistency suggested the jury was interested in examining Constand's credibility.
Meanwhile, the Cosby team released a statement from Marguerite Jackson, who for the last 30 years has worked as a student adviser at Temple. The statement said that when Constand was at the university, she had told Jackson she had not been sexually assaulted by a well-known personality but could claim she was to win money in a civil suit.
"Her response was that it had not happened but she could say it happened and file charges, file a civil suit and get the money," Jackson's statement said. Constand did not identify the personality as Cosby.
The statement was released by Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt during a lunch break. Jackson was sought as a witness by the defense but was rejected by O'Neill on hearsay grounds after Constand testified she did not know Jackson.
Jurors on the sequestered panel are from the Pittsburgh area. O'Neill had made clear that returning jurors home is a priority and has suggested he would encourage them to deliberate late into the evening so they can finish in a reasonable amount of time.
