Bill Cosby has been released from prison
The ruling freeing Cosby was handed down on Wednesday:
The court said Wednesday that it found an agreement with a previous prosecutor that prevented him from being charged in the case.
The disgraced actor has served more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a state prison near Philadelphia. He had vowed to serve all 10 years rather than acknowledge any remorse over the 2004 encounter with accuser Andrea Constand…
The former “Cosby Show” star was charged in late 2015, when a prosecutor armed with newly unsealed evidence — Cosby’s damaging deposition from her lawsuit — ordered his arrest just days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.
The trial judge had allowed just one other accuser to testify at Cosby’s first trial, when the jury deadlocked. However, he then allowed five other accusers to testify at the retrial about their experiences with Cosby in the 1980s.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that testimony tainted the trial, even though a lower appeals court had found it appropriate to show a signature pattern of drugging and molesting women.
The article is rather vague and sketchy on the legal issues involved. But I have written extensively on the Cosby trial, and I discussed those issues in previous posts. My conclusion at the time was that the trial in which Cosby was convicted was a real miscarriage of justice, whether or not he was guilty.
One of those posts of mine can be found here. It goes into the issues in some detail, so please read it if you’d like to understand why I think Cosby’s trial was unfair and why I support his release.
That post concludes with this paragraph:
Part II is coming soon. It concerns an agreement that may or may not have been made with Cosby in that civil trial, a deal that would have barred his deposition from being used in a criminal trial.
But I never wrote Part II – at least, I can’t locate it right now.
That is one of the main issues on which Cosby’s recent release was based. It’s not a minor thing, either – it’s actually very important. You can read about it at Legal Insurrection. An excerpt:
But Castor’s successors reopened the case and charged Cosby in 2015, just days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired and amid a barrage of new accusations from women across the country.
At the time, Castor objected to the new prosecution, saying he’d struck a deal with Cosby and his lawyers not to prosecute him for Constand’s assault if Cosby agreed to sit for a deposition in a civil case she had filed against him.
Excerpts from that deposition were ultimately used against Cosby at trial.
It all comes down to the 5th Amendment:
“The right against compulsory self-incrimination accompanies a person wherever he goes, no matter the legal proceeding in which he participates, unless and until “the potential exposure to criminal punishment no longer exists.” Taylor, 230 A.3d at 1065. It is indisputable that, in Constand’s civil case, Cosby was entitled to invoke the Fifth Amendment. No court could have forced Cosby to testify in a deposition or at a trial so long as the potential for criminal charges remained. Here, however, when called for deposition, Cosby no longer faced criminal charges. When compelled to testify, Cosby no longer had a right to invoke his right to remain silent.
“These legal commandments compel only one conclusion. Cosby did not invoke the Fifth Amendment before he incriminated himself because he was operating under the reasonable belief that D.A. Castor’s decision not to prosecute him meant that “the potential exposure to criminal punishment no longer exist[ed].” Id. at 1065. Cosby could not invoke that which he no longer possessed, given the Commonwealth’s assurances that he faced no risk of prosecution. Not only did D.A. Castor’s unconditional decision not to prosecute Cosby strip Cosby of a fundamental constitutional right, but, because he was forced to testify, Cosby provided Constand’s civil attorneys with evidence of Cosby’s past use of drugs to facilitate his sexual exploits. Undoubtedly, this information hindered Cosby’s ability to defend against the civil action, and led to a settlement for a significant amount of money. We are left with no doubt that Cosby relied to his detriment upon the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute him.”
Here’s another old post I wrote about the miscarriages of justice in the Cosby trial. Also see this post of mine.
The bottom line is that the release was the right decision, and it shouldn’t have taken this long to come to it. Why did the prosecution get away with their misconduct in the first place? For one thing, the conviction occurred at the height of MeToo. For another, Cosby had enraged the left by saying that black people should take more responsibility for their problems, and so corners were cut in order to convict him.
The DA who prosecuted Cosby knew of former DA Castor’s agreement with Cosby and either knew or had the resources to determine that then prosecuting Cosby would be a blatant violation of his 5th Amendment Right. The only appropriate consequence for the prosecuting DA’s misconduct is permanent disbarment.
In order to be effective, consequences must be personal.
Cosby paid a big price for not following the ‘woke’ narrative. It is good that he is out of prison. Unless the left starts taking accusations seriously from victims of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, they do not have a case.
The prosecuting DA, as I understand it, was a junior prosecutor on the aforementioned case, and so could not have been unaware of the arrangement surrounding the deposition. The #MeToo issues were running hot then, providing fertile ground for self-aggrandizement schemes – and as we have all seen (both this week and the past few years), this appears to be the Golden Age for prosecutorial discretion at a breathtaking scale – both to ignore obvious and easily-proven crimes that carry a big cost to society because of their visibility, as well as grandstanding prosecutions like this one (or like the Trump case this week).
I’m not a legal expert in any way, but it surprises me that this could exist as a feature in the national legal culture. What are the checks and balances, besides the electoral process? Is there no censure function? Is this an exploited feature that has landed us with all of these Leftist prosecutors who managed to gain office with flush Dark-money campaign accounts and no past experience as prosecutors? What would the reform look like?
The prosecuting DA, as I understand it, was a junior prosecutor on the aforementioned case, and so could not have been unaware of the arrangement surrounding the deposition.
Did the previous district attorney publicly object to the prosecution of the case or not? Is it so that junior prosecutors never associate with people who read newspapers?
” For one thing, the conviction occurred at the height of MeToo.” [Neo]
If you are correct (and I agree that this had an influence) it is another demonstration of how our justice system can be tainted and actually perverted by popular demand. Is this any different than ascribing the political demeanor of judges by referring to those who appointed them (an Obama appointment, a Trump appointment)?
I think that, to a certain point, this has always been present in the justice system, but the extent to which pitchforks and firebrands can influence a judicial process or decision in today’s age where any nut-case has access to an international megaphone is as terrifying as the judges, prosecutors. and defense attorneys willing to be influenced by them.
Just a man-on-street observation:
1. The original prosecutor agreed not to use the deposition in court, the following prosecutor should have honored the agreement.
2. Right or wrong, the depo was released and the public read Cosby’s confession to the crimes.
3. Cosby was convicted and sentenced to 3 – 10 years in prison.
4. He is 83 y/o, has served 2-1/2 years. With good behavior points, he would have been released around this time anyway.
In fairness under the law, Cosby should not have been prosecuted nor served any time. It really rankles, but overturning his conviction was the only legal decision for the judge. However, we still know two things to be true – 1) Bill Cosby raped the women; 2) OJ Simpson killed Nicole and Ron.
The cad who took Janice Dickenson’s virginity.
Indigo Red:
If you read the older posts of mine I linked, about the Cosby trial and the deposition, I think you’ll see that the deposition doesn’t quite say what I believe you think it says.
Neo, You are correct. Cosby was very careful not to outright confess to drugging and raping. He admitted to buying the ‘ludes with the purpose of having sex with the women, that he believed the accepting of the drugs ad the sex was consensual. He had previously made it clear in his stand-up act that he had been using quaaludes to have sex from an early age and praised their effectiveness. He knew exactly what he was doing and did not think it was wrong or illegal. The depo did not reach a legal standard for either prosecution or conviction. I am just a man-on-the-street and to me and all my street mates, Cosby is guilty, and as much as said so and I don’t really care the size of the glove Simpson or Cosby claims. They were both lucky. They were both guilty.
I was an alternate juror in Orange County, CA. The particulars don’t matter, I had a gut feeling the man was guilty as hell, but the prosecution utterly failed to prove their case. Had I been a deciding juror, my vote was not guilty. However, the sitting jurors found guilt very quickly. I do understand the difference between court and street standards of guilty, not guilty, and innocence (which is not a legal finding.) The prosecution could and did not prove Cosby’s guilt, and Cosby did not have to prove himself not guilty, but he certainly is not an innocent man.
Indigo Red:
I was responding to this statement of yours, specifically the word “know”: “we still know two things to be true – 1) Bill Cosby raped the women…”
I “know” no such thing. Some people certainly think it very very strongly. But there is no compelling evidence of it. Cosby’s deposition certainly doesn’t prove it.
In several of those previous posts that I linked, I wrote that on the whole I suspect that Cosby most likely was guilty. But that’s just a hunch. I have significant doubt about whether I’m correct.
What do we know? We know that Cosby was unfaithful, and liked kinky sex involving drugs, and that many women were part of that, either voluntarily or involuntarily. It’s the answer to the “voluntary or involuntary” question that’s unclear. We know what they said many many years later, when there was gain to be had from saying it. But unfortunately we don’t know what actually happened at the time in terms of the element of consent.
Neo – Fair enough.