Our Take: The prosecutor deserves the blame for Cosby’s result | Editorials

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Beloved TV dad but vilified real-life actor Bill Cosby won his appeal and was released from prison. Cosby’s victory in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court appears to have been based on a purely technical reading of the law, in that a promise by prosecutors to Cosby regarding a plea bargain was violated.

If the many complaints against Cosby are true, the responsibility for the loss in the case should not lie with anyone other than the prosecutor who made a promise and broke it.

But instead of targeting their distress at the prosecutor who lied, people continue to criticize Cosby, who was exonerated by the state Supreme Court.

The United States is still a nation in which an accused is innocent until proven guilty.

While lawyers representing those who claim to have been duped and drugged by Cosby complain that a technical detail has freed him, it is nonetheless an illegal action that has been used to convict him.

Those who say they have been victimized by Cosby may still have their time in court, but most have waited a long time to file their complaints, perhaps too long given the statute of limitations requirements.

The technicality has invoked a precedent in that a person on trial cannot be lied to by a prosecutor without recourse. A prosecutor, when proposing a plea bargain, cannot lie. Is this wrong?

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