The jury in the trial of Bill Cosby has been deliberating for 41 hours and, as of Thursday, still had not come to a decision in the sexual assault case brought against the beleaguered comedian by Andrea Constand.
“We’re into the 40th hour, and we can only imagine the emotional and physical toll this is taking on the jurors,” Cosby’s spokesman Andrew Wyatt told reporters outside the Montgomery County Courthouse prior to the jury being dismissed for the night. “We can only hope the judge– if they don’t have a verdict right now– will release them, and say this is a deadlock.”
Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill dismissed the jury after 9 p.m. on Thursday, though he had strangely seemed to send them back to work after chastising them over the schedule, then five minutes later realized what he had done and dismissed them.
“I may have been unclear in where we are right now,” O’Neill said. “You must be very tired. If I conveyed you were to go back and continue to work, I apologize.”
The jury was escorted back to the hotel where they have been sequestered since June 5, when the trial began.
Because the jury has not been able to come to a unanimous decision, Cosby has called for the judge to declare a mistrial.
“The record has been broken for Montgomery County, for deliberations,” Wyatt said, though the court said that Montgomery County does not keep statistics on jury deliberations. “We definitely want this thing to end, and hope the judge will tell jurors they’ve done their civic duty and that they’ve done it with ethics and integrity, and release them.”