Prosecutors have requested the US Supreme Court to reinstate Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction, arguing that a dangerous precedent could be set if press releases are treated as immunity agreements. Complaining in a petition released Monday, prosecutors claimed the verdict had been thrown out over a questionable agreement that the comic claimed gave him lifetime immunity.
A petition made on Monday saw prosecutors claim that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision, which overturned Cosby’s conviction, created a dangerous precedent. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele called the court’s decision “an indefensible rule,” predicting an onslaught of criminal appeals if it remains law.
Cosby’s lawyers have maintained their content in that the disgraced actor had only given damaging evidence in an accuser’s civil suit in 2006, on the promise that he would never be charged. Although the admissions were later used against Cosby in two criminal trials, the only evidence of the agreement can be seen within a 2005 press release. Included in the release is an ambiguous “caution” that Castor “will reconsider this decision should the need arise”.
The parties have since spent years debating what that meant. Writing in the petition, Montgomery County District Attorney, Kevin Steele said the decision, “as it stands, will have far-reaching negative consequences beyond Montgomery County and Pennsylvania. The US Supreme Court can right what we believe is a grievous wrong.” The petition seeks a Supreme Court review under the due process clause of the US Constitution.
Discussing the court ruling that overturned Cosby’s conviction in a television interview, prosecutors also complain that key facts of the case had been misstated by the chief judge of the state’s high court.
Castor’s successors, who gathered new evidence and arrested Cosby in 2015, have said this falls far short of a lifetime immunity agreement, casting doubt that Castor ever made such a deal.
“Instead, they say Cosby had strategic reasons to give the deposition rather than invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, even if it backfired when “he slipped up” in his rambling evidence.”
However, Cosby’s defence lawyers put forward the notion that the case of this disgraced celebrity should never have gone to trial because of an “non-prosecution agreement”.
The 84-year-old former actor became the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era following a guilty verdict from jurors in 2018. Cosby was found guilty at a retrial after the jury had found him guilty of drugging and molesting college sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004. Spending almost three years in prison, the disgraced celebrity was then brought before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court where he was set free in June.
With the US Supreme Court accepting fewer than 1% of the petitions it receives, Steele’s bid to revive the case is a long shot. Legal scholars and victim advocates will be watching closely, though, to see if the court takes an interest in a high-profile #MeToo case.
Two justices on the court, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, were accused of sexual misconduct during their bitterly fought confirmation hearings. Appellate judges have voiced sharply different views of the Cosby case, with an intermediate state court upholding the conviction. The seven justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court then wrote three separate opinions on it.
