In a decision issued today, the Pennsylvania Superior Court refused to overturn a lower court ruling that sent Bill Cosby to prison for three to ten years. Judge John Bender wrote the court’s 94-page decision.
According to the New York Times, “the appeals court rejected arguments by Mr. Cosby’s lawyers that the acts recounted by the women were too disparate to represent a pattern, stating, ‘It is impossible for two incidents of sexual assault involving different victims to be identical in all respects.’ The judges found instead that the accounts indeed represented a “distinct, signature pattern,” namely that Mr. Cosby had acted as a mentor to gain women’s trust and then used drugs to sexually assault them, calling it at one point ‘the Appellant’s unique sexual assault playbook.’ “