BREAKING NEWS: Bill Cosby Is Being Released From Prison

Don’t get me wrong, I have the highest regard for the American justice system.

But today, as it does sometimes, it just leaves me shaking my head.

Bill Cosby is being released today.

The former TV star who was once known as “America’s Dad” and was later accused of sexual assault by 58 women, is getting off on a technicality.

https://twitter.com/oncodebrotha83/status/1410293273458008072

According to the AP:

Cosby, 83, has served more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence after being found guilty of drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era.

The former “Cosby Show” star was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition testimony in a lawsuit brought by Constand — brought charges against him days before the 12-year statute of limitations ran out.

But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby. There was no evidence that promise was ever put in writing.

Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the former district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in the Constand’s civil case.

The court called Cosby’s arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.”

The justices said that overturning the conviction, and barring any further prosecution, “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”

So to summarize, apparently, the previous prosecutor had made a deal with Cosby that if he testified, he would not be prosecuted. There was never anything in writing.

The next prosecutor did not honor this deal and did prosecute Cosby who ended up with a 10-year sentence.

Today the Pennsylvania Supreme court overturned his conviction because it was, apparently, a violation of “Due Process.”

Although he was accused by 58 people, Cosby only had one conviction because of the 12-year statute of limitations.

Twitter is going crazy:

In 2015, 35 women told us their stories about being assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the culture that wouldn’t listen https://t.co/aRuzlErpzL

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) June 30, 2021

In case you missed it from the PA Supreme Court decision… Because of Bruce Castor's decision when it came to Bill Cosby's 5th Amendment rights, not only is Bill Cosby going free, but he also CAN'T be charged again for the same crimes.

Fucking heinous.
And a horrific injustice.

— Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) June 30, 2021

"This is absolutely wild," @AriMelber says on Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to overturn Bill Cosby's conviction. "The Court today is not saying Cosby didn't do it. The Court is saying he reached a deal never to be charged for it."https://t.co/ELYVq9HieV

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 30, 2021

What’s especially horrifying is that Cosby as much as admitted that he raped those women.

This is part of his testimony from 2015, as reported by CNN:

While Cosby admitted that he acquired seven prescriptions of Quaaludes with the intent to give the sedatives to young women he wanted to have sex with, he has not admitted to actually drugging any of his accusers.

He did say he gave drugs to “other people,” but when Troiani began to ask Cosby if he gave other people Quaaludes knowing they were illegal, Cosby’s attorney interjected and said that his client acknowledged giving them only to a woman whose name is redacted.

Cosby later testified that he “misunderstood. Woman, meaning (the woman whose name is redacted), not women” – even though Troiani had used neither word in her question.

“You gave them to other people?” Troiani had previously asked, to which the comedian replied, “Yes.”

While Cosby’s attorneys cite two women who “allegedly say that they knowingly took Quaaludes offered to them by Defendant in the late 1970’s” – one of them being former model Theresa Serignese, who has shared her accusations publicly – they do not address the numerous women who say they were given pills for a variety of reasons, including to “cheer up.”

Several women allege Cosby used cappuccino, soft drinks, wine or other beverages as vehicles to drug them, but accusers Constand, Serignese, Janice Dickinson, Tamara Green, Victoria Valentino, Donna Motsinger and a woman identified only as Chelan have alleged Cosby gave them capsules or pills – sometimes billing them as medication – before assaulting them.

…

The documents include Cosby’s recollection of an incident in Las Vegas in the 1970s.

“She meets me backstage. I give her Quaaludes. We then have sex,” he said.

While the woman’s name was redacted in the deposition transcript, Cosby’s lawyers say in a motion filed the following month, “Defendant testified that he offered Quaaludes to Theresa Serignese, and that she knowingly took them.”

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An attorney who represents three Cosby accusers, including Serignese, told “CNN Tonight” that “it appears” Cosby was talking about Serignese, although Joseph Cammarata stopped short of saying for sure.

Previously, Serignese had told ABC’s “20/20” that she was a 19-year-old model visiting Las Vegas when Cosby handed her pills in a private dressing room after a performance.

“Take these,” Cosby told her, according to Serignese.

After consuming the pills, she remembered “feeling drugged, and I was kind of leaning forward, and he was behind me having sex with me. And I – I remember it because it was not good.”

While many say that the law was followed and “Due Process” is vital to the American justice system one can’t help but feel terrible for all the victims who were violated by this sick man.

I also can’t help but wonder if there would have been much greater uproar if he had been a rich white man instead of a rich black man.