Jury Starts Deliberations in Cosby Case

As entertainer Bill Cosby made his first courtroom appearance in the three-week trial of his son’s accused killer, a jury heard emotional closing arguments Monday before beginning deliberations on the fate of Mikail Markhasev.

The orations lasted nearly four hours, but the arguments by both sides were simple.

Defense attorneys said the prosecution’s entire case is built on the unreliable testimony of greedy people with criminal records either seeking reward money from tabloids, favor from the prosecution because of pending cases, or both. But the prosecutor said everything points to Markhasev, especially damning jailhouse letters in which he virtually admits to the crime.

Tension filled the courtroom as the jurors filed in for the final arguments, and journalists from across the country watched intently for any sign of interaction between the panel and the man who has come to fame as America’s favorite television dad.

Several jurors appeared to recognize Cosby as he sat in the front row flanked by his wife, Camille, daughters Erika and Erinn, and a host of other family members and friends.

Just a few seats down from Cosby sat Victoria Markhasev, who last week tried to convince the jury that her son could not have killed Ennis Cosby, the entertainer’s only son, because he was at home helping her pack for a move to a new apartment in North Hollywood.

She and Cosby, like much of the rest of the audience, watched her tall, pale son take his seat beside his lawyers and lean forward so his armed escorts could remove the handcuffs.

Then they all settled in as Deputy Dist. Atty. Anne Ingalls and Deputy Alternate Public Defenders Harriet Hawkins and Henry J. Hall summed up their cases.

Cosby, dressed in a beige suit, listened intently as Ingalls told jurors how she believes Markhasev tried to rob 27-year-old Ennis Cosby and ended up shooting him in the head and then fleeing with two companions, Eli Zakaria and Sara Ann Peters.

At the noon break, she and Cosby conversed for several minutes across the railing separating the audience from the lawyers tables.

Ingalls, standing just a few feet in front of Cosby during proceedings, spoke with animation for the first time in the trial, challenging the jury to use common sense in weighing the defense allegation that Zakaria, not Markhasev, killed Cosby.

The prosecution has argued that Cosby was en route on the San Diego Freeway to the Sherman Oaks home of friend Stephanie Crane when his Mercedes-Benz blew a tire near the Skirball Center Drive exit. Crane joined him to help change it. While Cosby worked on the tire, Markhasev, Zakaria and Peters were using the phones at a nearby park-and-ride lot trying to reach a drug connection, according to testimony.

The jury deliberated about 45 minutes before retiring for the night. Cosby, who was escorted to and from the courtroom through a side door, did not comment publicly.

Markhasev is charged with murder while trying to commit a robbery. If the jury convicts him of both crimes, he faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. But because the prosecution is seeking a conviction under a rule called “felony murder,” it has to win convictions on both counts to send Markhasev to prison for life.

Ingalls said Monday that Markhasev and his two friends could not reach their drug connection, so Markhasev decided to rob Cosby and Crane, who was seated in her Jaguar watching her friend change the tire in the glow of her headlights. The killer first accosted Crane, scaring her away briefly.

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Explaining for the first time why the killer did not take $740 or a Rolex watch from Cosby, Ingalls said Markhasev ran away when he saw Crane turn around to come back to the scene.

Ingalls hammered on the defense’s contention that Zakaria killed Cosby, pointing to two passages in one of a series of jailhouse letters in which Markhasev allegedly wrote that he did the job alone and that Zakaria was not “in the mix.”

In those letters, Markhasev virtually admits to the killing and the attempted robbery, once describing it as “robbery gone bad.”

Taking on defense contentions that the letters were forgeries because some of them were provided by a convicted forger, Ingalls noted that a handwriting expert confirmed their authenticity. She also argued that the letters contained numerous details of the crime that only the killer and the police knew at the time.

At one point, Ingalls launched into series of “so what?” questions in an attempt to downplay major points of the defense case.

If Christopher So, the witness who testified that he helped Markhasev and friend in an unsuccessful search for a gun in a wooded area, could not remember the exact dates that the search occurred, “so what? He led us to the gun,” she said, referring to the murder weapon that was later found in the same wooded area.

So also said he heard Markhasev say: “I shot the n-----. It’s all over the news.”

But Hawkins and Hall told the jury of six men and six women that they should not believe any of So’s testimony because his story was embellished to make it marketable to the National Enquirer, which has agreed to pay $100,000 for his story.

As for the letters, Hawkins said they are forgeries because the writing does not look like Markhasev’s. Responding to Ingalls’ argument that the defense did not call a handwriting expert, Hawkins said the differences are so apparent that an expert is not needed.

When Hall took up the defense arguments, he reiterated the defense’s basic argument that Zakaria’s physical appearance more closely fits the description of the killer that Crane gave to police.

He placed a composite based on that description next to Zakaria’s picture, arguing that it was a close depiction of him.

“There are no fingerprints on the car or on the gun, no identification and the letters have problems,” Hall said.

He noted that the prosecution did not produce a single witness who says Markhasev was at the scene.

Responding to Ingall’s assertion that a hair pulled from a cap that was wrapped around the murder weapon contained DNA matching Markhasev’s, Hall suggested that police planted it. He said the hair mysteriously appeared late in the investigation after two criminalists examined all the hairs that had been plucked from the cap and found none suitable for DNA analysis.

Hall, for the first time, conceded to the jury that he failed to keep the promise he made in opening arguments two weeks ago--to show that Zakaria killed Cosby--but he said the prosecution also failed to show that Markhasev committed the crime.

“I can’t prove to you Eli Zakaria committed the crime. But look at the description, look at the faces, . . . and there you have it.”