Cosby released after court overturns sex assault conviction
June 30, 2021
Bill Cosby, 83, walked free Wednesday after the top court in the US state of Pennsylvania vacated his conviction on a sexual assault charge.
Cosby was charged in late 2015 over an alleged assault in 2004. He had served more than two years of his three-to-10-year sentence in a state prison near Philadelphia.
The charges stem from an allegation made by Andrea Constand, a former professional basketball player and employee of his alma mater, Temple University. She said the comedian and former TV star drugged and assaulted her at his suburban Philadelphia home.
Cosby conviction vacated
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled an agreement with a previous prosecutor prevented Cosby from being charged despite there being no written evidence of any such agreement.
In late 2015, Cosby was charged based on unsealed evidence, a damaging deposition, in Constand's civil suit against Cosby. He was arrested just before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.
Cosby had vowed to serve all 10 years rather than concede any sort of guilt.
Last September, his appellate lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, argued, "The presumption of innocence just didn't exist for him."
On Wednesday, a split court agreed. Justice David Wecht said Cosby was forthcoming about providing women with quaaludes and alcohol before sex acts in the deposition because he had been told by a former prosecutor he would not be charged.
In vacating the conviction and preventing Cosby from being prosecuted again, Wecht said it "is the only remedy that comports with society's reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.''
From family man to fallen #MeToo man
Cosby grew up in public housing in Philadelphia. Despite his humble origins, he made a $400 million (€337 million) fortune playing an upper-middle-class doctor on "The Cosby Show" in a career that spanned half a century on the strength of his TV show, stand-up act and books.
In the later years of his career, his star faded as he gave moralizing diatribes aimed at Black Americans on family values. At the time of his arrest, he was attempting a comeback.
District Attorney Kevin Steele made the decision to arrest Cosby despite the non-prosecution agreement Cosby was said to have made with a predecessor.
The predecessor who made the non-prosecution pact, Bruce Castor, was in the news earlier this year while representing Donald Trump at his second House impeachment trial on charges of incitement of insurrection.
In Cosby's first trial on sex assault charges, the jury deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. The judge allowed only one accuser besides Constand to testify.
In the second trial, in which he was convicted, five other accusers were permitted to testify about their experiences with the then superstar comedian in the 1980s. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday this testimony tainted the trial.
While the lower appeals court ruled the testimony showed a pattern of drugging and assaulting women, the higher court saw it as a character attack.
Cosby was the first celebrity to be tried and convicted in the #MeToo era where women address, often publicly and in an extrajudicial fashion, alleged sexual violations by men as a result of perceived lack of accountability provided by the US criminal justice system.
A dozen women who say they were assaulted by Cosby have civil suits against the comedian pending.
Reactions to Cosby's release
Phylicia Rashad, known for playing the role of his wife on "The Cosby Show," tweeted, "a miscarriage of justice is corrected!"
Dylan Farrow, daughter of actress Mia who has accused her famous former stepfather Woody Allen of sexual molestation when she was a girl, wrote in a statement, "It is a perfect example of how not just our society, but our justice system, continually fails survivors of sexual assault."
Local news choppers showed Cosby flashing a peace sign as he arrived home.
ar/sms (AFP, AP, Reuters)