June 19, 2017
After more than 52 hours of deliberation during Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial, gridlocked jurors were finally free to go home Saturday when the case ended – for now – in a mistrial.
Though the names of jurors have not been publicly released to the media, alternate juror Mike McCloskey spoke to Pittsburgh radio station WDVE-FM about his experience in the courtroom and being sequestered from the active jury. After hearing all the evidence, he told the station he would have voted to convict Cosby.
“I would say [the alternates] would have voted to convict, but that’s solely based on what I think, because literally when we’re sitting in this room as the six alternates, we weren’t allowed to talk about the trial,” McCloskey told the station.
Appearing on the "DVE Morning Show," McCloskey told host Randy Baumann he was surprised to be chosen as a member of the jury but attributed it to his lack of following the case previously on social media.
“It was kind of a shock to me when I was selected,” McCloskey said. “I was the Wednesday selection, and when I went in, there was 100 people in the room and they kind of just picked me out.” He added that his main concern, at that point, was missing the Pittsburgh Penguins play.
“I said if you want to know anything [about the game], I can probably let you know anything you want to know about that,” McCloskey said he told the judge.
McCloskey was one of six alternate jurors. Though he was present for the entire trial, he was sequestered from the jury’s deliberation room and on call only if a member of the jury had to go home. At that point, deliberation among the jury would have had to start from the beginning.
After a mistrial was declared, McCloskey said he was eager to finally be able to talk about it among the other jurors. Once the dozen active jurors emerged, however, he said the atmosphere was purely silent.
“I thought there would be a lot of chatter on the bus ride home, but nobody wanted to talk about it,” he said. “It was complete silence. It was the craziest, eeriest bus ride I’ve ever taken.”
McCloskey also described one of the most memorable pieces of evidence from the courtroom: a recorded phone conversation between Cosby and the mother of Andrea Constand, Cosby's accuser. According to McCloskey, Cosby apologized to Constand’s mother and described graphically the sexual acts that took place during the night in question.
Describing the call as “ridiculously creepy,” McCloskey said Cosby “called himself a dirty old man to her, the mom.”
The mother's testimony was the most moving for McCloskey.
“If you could have seen Andrea Constand’s mom on the stand, the lady would have blown you away. She would have made you almost cry,” he said. “I wanted to get up and clap for this lady.”
The names of the jurors have not yet been released, though The Associated Press, The New York Times and other members of the press plan to motion for the judge to release the names to the media.
Once the case was declared a mistrial, McCloskey said he felt “ridiculously sick.”
“I devoted two weeks of my life sequestered in Norristown, PA, which, if you’ve ever been to Norristown, it’s horrible. There’s nothing there,” he said.
Jokes aside, he said he feels most badly for Cosby’s accuser, Constand.
“She has to go through it all over again,” he said. “It’s really sad for her because literally… [there is] nothing really, financially, to gain out of this. She’s just looking for justice, I believe.”
