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Cosby Trial Live Briefing

At Bill Cosby’s Trial, 28 Hours of Deliberation and Still No Verdict

• Read updates from Day 9 of the Bill Cosby trial.

• The presentation of evidence at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial proceeded faster than anticipated. But the jury deliberations have been slow and painstaking as the panel completed its third day reviewing the evidence in the case without a verdict.

• Mr. Cosby has sat in the courtroom or a nearby room during the deliberations. Also in attendance on Wednesday was the woman he is accused of assaulting, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University staff member who says he drugged her then molested her while she was incapacitated.

• The jurors have asked the judge, Steven T. O’Neill, a number of questions, seeking clarification or a second run-through of the evidence. Everyone waiting in the hallways has some opinion of how the panel is leaning, but no one really knows.

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Bill Cosby, arriving for deliberations on the eighth day of his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa.Credit...Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The deliberations have been extended, and that is clearly going to create some pressure for the panel of five women and seven men, who are sequestered at a local hotel, 300 miles away from their homes in Allegheny County.

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Members of the media and public line up Wednesday outside the courtroom during the third day of jury deliberations at the trial of Bill Cosby on sexual assault charges.

Credit...Mark Makela/Getty Images

They were selected far from the site of the Cosby trial, the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., because of concerns about the effect of pretrial publicity. Pennsylvania judicial officials refused to detail the terms of their sequestration — whether, for example, they can have a laptop computer with them. But the jurors clearly have been warned against digesting any media about the case.

“You can’t even discuss the case with members of your own family,” Judge O’Neill told them at the outset.

Being on a sequestered jury is “not unlike being in a medium-security prison,” said Paula L. Hannaford-Agor, director of the Center for Juries Studies at the National Center for State Courts.

It is rare to sequester a jury for an entire trial, as is the case with the Cosby panel. Does the pressure of being confined away from home push juries toward a rushed consensus?

Experts disagree, but Judge O’Neill made it clear from the start of the case that the system is founded on the belief that the jurors’ judgment would be sound.

“You are it,” he told them. “You are the ones I am relying on.”

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Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represents several of the women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, walks last week though the courthouse where he is being tried.Credit...Pool photo by Matt Rourke

Rumors are rife. The hours of waiting are long. Both sides, and the media, too, look for any clue as to how the jury is progressing.

Here’s one educated guess.

“At this point, we can assume there is some significant disagreement — but perhaps the length of deliberation simply reflects the fact that the jury is doing a thorough and thoughtful review and discussion of the issues,” said Michelle Madden Dempsey, a law professor at Villanova University.

“The judge should not do anything to coerce a verdict,” she continued. “If they report to the judge that they’re deadlocked, the judge will probably give them a ‘Spencer charge/instruction.’”

Such an instruction, which is outlined in Pennsylvania law, is designed to clarify for jurors what is viewed as acceptable in reaching consensus and it advises them to continue to deliberate, with an open mind to the reconsideration of views, without giving up firmly held convictions.

“Basically, at this point, the jury should be left to do its work,” she said.

On Wednesday afternoon, the jury asked that Ms. Constand’s testimony, where she gave her account of the encounter with the pills, be read to them, and it was, over the course of a half-hour, before they returned to their deliberations.

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Judge Steven T. O’Neill talks in his courtroom during the trial of Bill Cosby in Norristown, Pa.Credit...Jane Rosenberg

The skill was apparent Tuesday night when he whistled to quiet his courtroom.

But he’s been known at the courthouse for his whistling for many years. People say you can often hear him coming down the hallway because his tune precedes him, as it did Wednesday morning as he headed toward his robing room.

What was the tune? he was asked.

“The Leftovers,” he replied, apparently a reference to music from the HBO series about an apocalypse when some part of the Earth’s population randomly vanishes.

Mark Roth and Jon Hurdle contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: At Cosby Trial, Days Without a Verdict. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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