Bill Cosby: Prosecutors ask US Supreme Court to review case against comedian | Bill Cosby

[ad_1]

Prosecutors asked the US Supreme Court to review the ruling that overturned Bill Cosby’s conviction, arguing in Monday’s petition that the decision announced in a news release does not give the defendant lifelong immunity.

Prosecutors said the ruling could set a dangerous precedent if convictions are overturned due to suspected closed deals. They also complained that the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeared to misinterpret key facts of the case when he discussed the court’s ruling that overturned Cosby’s conviction in a television interview.

“The United States Supreme Court can correct what we believe to be a fatal error,” Kevin Steele, the Montgomery County District Attorney, wrote in the petition, which seeks Supreme Court review under the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.

Cosby’s lawyers have long argued that he relied on a promise he would never be charged when he gave malicious testimony in the defendant’s civil lawsuit in 2006.

The confessions were later used against him in two criminal trials.

The only written evidence of such a promise is a 2005 press release from then-Attorney General Bruce Castor, who said he did not have sufficient evidence to arrest Cosby. The release included a vague “warning” that Castor would “reconsider this decision if the need arises”. The parties have since spent years debating what that means.

Castor’s successors, who gathered new evidence and arrested Cosby in 2015, say that falls short of a life-immunity agreement. They also suspect that Castor made such a deal. Instead, they say, Cosby had strategic reasons for giving the affidavit rather than invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, even if it backfired when he “slid” into his scattered testimony.

However, defense attorneys say the case should not have gone to trial because of what they call a “non-prosecution agreement”.

Cosby, 84, became the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a jury in his 2018 retrial found him guilty of drugging and molesting college sports director Andrea Constand in 2004.

He spent nearly three years in prison before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released him in June.

Steele’s attempt to revive the elusive case. The US Supreme Court accepts less than 1% of the petitions it receives. However, legal scholars and victims’ advocates will be watching closely to see if the court cares about the high-profile #MeToo case.

Two court judges, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, have been charged with sexual misconduct during their bitter fight hearings.

Cosby, a leading black comedian and actor, created the highest-rated Cosby Show in the 1980s. A barrage of sexual assault allegations later decimated his image as an American father and led to multi-million dollar court settlements with at least eight women. But the Konstand case was the only case that led to criminal charges being brought.

Five of them testified with the prosecution to support Constand’s allegations, testimony that Cosby’s lawyers also challenged on appeal. However, the state Supreme Court has refused to address the thorny issue of how many other defendants can testify in criminal cases before the evidence becomes unfair to the defense.

In his recent memoirs, Constand described the ruling as less important than the growing support for sexual assault survivors inspired by the #MeToo movement.

The outcome of the trial seemed oddly insignificant. It was as if the world was transformed again in a more significant way,” Konstand wrote in a book, The Moment.

[ad_2]