Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, Bill Cosby and spokesman Andrew Wyatt speak outside Cosby’s Philadelphia suburban home in June, after the actor was released from prison.
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Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, Bill Cosby and spokesman Andrew Wyatt speak outside Cosby’s Philadelphia suburban home in June, after the actor was released from prison.
Michael Abbott / Getty Images
Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pa., are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to review a state high court’s decision to grant comedian and actor Bill Cosby less than a month of freedom of movement. three years after he was found guilty of assaulting a woman in the #MeToo Case.
Cosby was found guilty of indecent assault in April 2018 as overturned last June, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the actor’s due process rights had been violated.
He was charged with an alleged 2004 assault against Andrea Constand, who was working for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia, after prosecutors told him they would did not bring criminal charges against him. By the time the ruling was overturned, Cosby had been serving a scheduled three- to 10-year sentence of more than two years.
In his appeal to the state Supreme Court, Cosby argued that a statement made by then-district attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr in 2005 promised that Cosby would not face criminal charges stemming from it. Constand’s allegation that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home. .
Castor has said he verbally told Cosby’s attorney that he would not prosecute the actor and comedian, and he later issued a press release announcing that the investigation His office’s criminality is over. In court, Castor testified that he took those measures in an attempt to get Cosby to testify in any civil action filed by Costand. In its June ruling, the state’s Supreme Court found that the non-prosecution agreement was binding.
In one Press Release Monday, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision could set a precedent that “statements by prosecutors in the press release appear to confer immunity.”
“This decision will have far-reaching negative consequences beyond Montgomery County and Pennsylvania,” said Steele. “The Supreme Court of the United States may right what we believe to be an unfortunate mistake.”
In a statement to NPR, a spokesman for Cosby, Andrew V. Wyatt, argued that the Montgomery County DA is asking the nation’s highest court to “throw the Constitution out the window, as it did, to satisfy the #metoo crowd.”
“This is a pathetic last-ditch attempt that will fail,” he wrote, adding that “the attachment to Mr Cosby makes it difficult to say the least.”
According to the official website of the United States Courts, the Supreme Court is request review more than 7,000 cases per year, and only hear about 100 to 150 appeals per year.
