From the New York Times on day 1 of the trial:

[P]hone records, not previously disclosed publicly, show that Ms. Constand called Mr. Cosby 53 times, some calls lasting half an hour or more, in the months after the encounter in 2004 at his home in Cheltenham, a suburb of Philadelphia. Yet when she went to the police nearly a year later, Mr. McMonagle said, she told them that she had not tried to contact him.

As to excluding the testimony of all but one of his other accusers: I would have excluded all of them, but the jury had no questions about that person's testimony, so it doesn't seem to have been much of a factor. I think calls to repeal the statute of limitations on sex crimes are off base and just attempts at lobbying by victims' rights groups who are using the Cosby case to further their particular agendas.

I also think the DA's announcement that the state would seek a retrial was premature. First he doesn't even know the jury's position. If it was 11 to 1 for acquittal, a retrial would be a waste of resources.

“We will take a hard look at everything involved and then we will retry it,” Mr. Steele said, adding that Ms. Constand “is entitled to a verdict in this case.”

A hung jury is a verdict, just like guilty and not guilty are verdicts.

Ms. Constand got her verdict: A mistrial. It means the jury did not unanimously agree the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's all this trial was about: whether the state proved the charges involving Constand beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless all 12 jurors agree it did, the state failed. A hung jury/mistrial is a legitimate verdict.

In my view, even if it turns out the jury's position was 11 to 1 for conviction, there should be no retrial. The prosecution took its best shot and misfired. Enough. Bill Cosby is 79, legally blind, and his professional reputation has been destroyed. He already settled the civil suit with Constand. The other civil suits against him will continue. Everybody knows he's got deep pockets and wants a piece of his pie. There's nothing that can be done to stop them from trying, but the civil arena is where this should end, not in a criminal retrial.

One last thought: Not having followed the case closely, I always assumed the charge involved a date-rate drug. Turns out it was about quaaludes or benedryl, neither of which are date-rape drugs. Qaaludes (Rorer 714 and later Lemmon 714) were widely prescribed throughout the 70's and early 80's and widely taken by lots of people (for recreational as well as medical purposes). Ronald Reagan signed legislation changing their classification to schedule I in 1984, which banned doctors from prescribing them. (Pharmaceutical companies actually stopped manufacturing them in the U.S. in 1981.) Cosby reportedly received 7 prescriptions in the 1970's from an LA OBGYN who is long deceased. He said they were gone by 2002. The alleged incident with Constand occurred in 2004.

Without proof, which the state didn't present, I think a jury would be hard-pressed to find he still had pills from his 7 prescriptions 25- 30 years later, when the incident with Constand occurred. Not to mention, the pills would have expired so long ago, they could have lost much of their potency by 2004.

More importantly, Constand and Cosby both said the pills he gave her were blue. The Quaaludes prescribed in this country were not blue. They were white, with 714 stamped on them. They came in different strengths (up to 300 mg). Cosby said the pills were long in shape and he broke them in half. Quaaludes were round. (They didn't have generics for quaaludes or most other drugs in the 70's.)

What's blue and long? Hundreds of pills. There are 1.0 mg blue elliptical Xanax. The Xanax are scored for easy breaking in half. There were blue elliptical Halcion (which I had no idea were still available here, as they were banned in the UK in 1991, and I haven't seen them since the early 80's, but their manufacturer's prescribing brochure is dated 12/16, so I guess they are.)

So while it's unlikely there will ever be a firm identification of the pills Cosby gave to Constand, I think it is even more unlikely they were Quaaludes.

Quaaludes made people more uninhibited, which may have made people feel more comfortable about having sex, but that's hardly the same thing as forcing someone to have sex. Quaaludes were not a date-rape drug. The most dangerous thing about them was probably attempting to drive (which most people had the good sense not to do.)Quaaludes are an indelible part of the 70's, remembered fondly and nostagically by many of those who took them back then. Most reporters today are too young to have ever encountered a Quaalude, so their reporting comes from other reporting, not personal experiences.

More importantly, and back to Cosby, there was never any evidence Cosby gave Quaaludes to Constand or the other accuser who was allowed to testify. As his lawyers had unsuccessfully argued in trying to keep the old deposition about his Quaalude history from the 70'sout of the case:

Cosby confessed to getting quaaludes and giving them to women other than Constand and the other accuser permitted to testify and, as such, is unrelated to the trial.

“Any discussion of quaaludes would only divert the jury away from its duty of weighing the evidence as to Ms. Constand, the only alleged victim,” his lawyers argued. “Quaaludes have not been available in this country for nearly two decades. They were part of a bygone era where the use of drugs for recreational purposes and in combination with casual sex was part of the culture.”

Cosby also denied giving Quaaludes to anyone without their permission or to force them to have sex. (He said he hoped the pills would make the women he was involved with want to have some kind of sexual encounter with him.) And he denied giving Quaaludes to anyone after 2002.

In the deposition, he said that at one point he gave Quaaludes to a woman named Teresa and that she acted like she was “high.” He also said he hadn’t given them to anyone between 2000 and 2005, and that he did not have any other pills that would have similar effects to those of Quaaludes.

...Cosby said in deposition testimony read Thursday that the three pills he gave Costand were the decongestant Benadryl, and that he cut one pill in two and then gave her another half pill.

Cosby turned over some pink benedryl to the police in 2005 voluntarily. But he also said in the deposition the pills he gave Constand were blue. Just like there were no blue quaaludes, there were no pink quaaludes. Nor was there any suggestion Cosby obtained pills from anyone other than a licensed physician, so whatever bootlegged Quaaludes may have been (or are still) floating around, it was never alleged they made their way to Cosby.

This trial does not speak to the many claims of other accusers. I am not familiar with their claims. But from reading many accounts today of this trial, I think the jury's refusal to convict as to Constand was the right call. I also think the media reporting is biased. Most people (including me, until I began reading dozens of articles today) believed Cosby was accused of and admitted giving Quaaludes to Constand when that's just not the case. His deposition about Quaaludes involved other people, decades prior to the incident with Constand.

What's unfortunate is that those who are unhappy with this verdict will seize on it as a reason we should change our laws on sexual assault and ban more drugs from being prescribed. Neither is called for by this verdict. This verdict was only about Constand and the state's failure to prove her allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. Quaaludes, like bell bottom jeans and Studio 54, are no more than artifacts of the 70's.