Bill Cosby’s lawyer inquired of the United States Prosecutors’ attempt to reinstate his criminal sex-assault case was rejected by the Supreme Court on Monday.
The 84-year-old actor and comedian has been free since June, when a Pennsylvania appeals court overturned his conviction and released him after nearly three years in prison. The state’s highest court found that when Cosby gave damaging testimony in the accuser’s 2005 lawsuit, he believed he had a nonprosecution agreement with a former district attorney.
After his arrest in 2015, he was charged with lying to the FBI. “Despite the commonwealth’s warning of imminent catastrophic consequences, the Cosby ruling will likely be confined to its own ‘rare, if not entirely unique’ set of circumstances,” she wrote in a 15-page response filed Monday. “The Cosby case rests on a narrow set of facts that should not interest the Supreme Court.”
Only around 1% of the petitions that come to the Supreme Court of the United States are accepted. The only written proof of a non-prosecution guarantee is a 2005 news release from Bruce Castor, the then-district attorney, who indicated he didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Cosby at the time, stating that he didn’t have enough evidence. When the jury found him guilty of drugging and molesting college sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004, he became the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era, according to Steele. Legal scholars and victim advocates will be keeping a close eye on the case to see if the Supreme Court takes it seriously.
During their highly disputed confirmation hearings, two justices on the court, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, were accused of sexual assault. In the 1980s, Bill Cosby, a revolutionary Black actor and comedian, developed the top-rated “Cosby Show.” His reputation as “America’s Dad” was eventually tarnished by a storm of sexual assault charges, which resulted in multimillion-dollar legal settlements with at least eight women. The Associated Press normally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault until they speak out publicly, as Constand did, but it was the only one that led to criminal charges.
