>From the article: "court transcripts show the jury had questions about what constituted consent." If the jury had questions about what consent is, how was the verdict based on the certainty of her consciousness and engagement?

Likely that just meant that they asked the judge to repeat his instructions re what constitutes consent (or perhaps they were able to ask specific questions re consent that the judge answered) Anyway based on that, they were able to render a decision that the victim showed consciousness and engagement enough to say she consented (at least according to the authors of the letter).