On Tuesday (June 23), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided to review a decision of the trial court that allowed five other accusers to testify at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial. Cosby was convicted in April of 2018. In September of that year, he was sentenced to three to ten years in prison. At the time he was sentenced, Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge, Steven O’Neill, ordered Cosby to be jailed immediately, denying his request for bail while lawyers appealed the conviction. And since then, he has at a Pennsylvania state prison known as SCI Phoenix, located near Collegeville.
Court will look at two aspects of the case.
The AP reported that, “The Supreme Court has agreed to review two aspects of the case, including the judge’s decision to let prosecutors call the other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters with the actor and comedian. Cosby’s lawyers have long complained the testimony is remote and unreliable. The court will also consider, as it weighs the scope of the evidence allowed, whether the jury should have heard Cosby’s own deposition testimony about getting quaaludes to give women in the past.
Secondly, the court will examine Cosby’s argument that he had an agreement with a former prosecutor that he would never be charged in the case. Cosby has said he relied on the alleged promise before agreeing to give the deposition in trial accuser Andrea Constand’s lawsuit.”
Legal Analysis
According to the New York Times, “In Pennsylvania and many other states, testimony concerning prior alleged crimes is allowed if, among other conditions, it demonstrates a signature pattern of abuse. Such testimony by other accusers played a role in the Harvey Weinstein case, where their testimony was sought to demonstrate a pattern of predatory behavior by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, however, argue that he was denied a fair trial because the allegations by the other women were too remote in time and too dissimilar to the case for which he was being tried.”
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, In a statement to the press, “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has narrowed the issues on appeal, limiting them to prior bad acts and the sovereign edict. We look forward to briefing and arguing these issues and remain confident in the trial court and Superior Court’s previous decisions.”
In an interview with ABC on Wednesday (June 24), Cosby’s wife, Camille Cosby, was critical of the the #Me Too movement.
She said, “The #MeToo movement and movements like them have intentional ignorance pertaining to the history of particular white women — not all white women — but particular white women, who have from the very beginning, pertaining to the enslavement of African people, accused Black males of sexual assault without any proof whatsoever, no proof, anywhere on the face of the earth.” Mrs. Cosby compared her husband’s case to the incidents that triggered the Tulsa, Oklahoma Massacre in 1921, and to the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.
Cosby: When I come up for parole, they’re not going to hear me say that I have remorse.
In November of 2019, Cosby did a 14-minute phone interview with BlackPressUsa. During that inteview he insisted that he was innocent. “It’s all a set up. That whole jury thing. They were imposters,” Cosby told BlackPressUSA.
“Look at the woman who blew the whistle,” he said, alluding to the potential juror who overheard a seated juror proclaim before the trial that, “he’s guilty, we can all go home now.”