Bill Cosby’s release ruling is up for appeal at the Supreme Court
Pennsylvania's district attorney has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning his overturned conviction
Aux News Bill Cosby
Pennsylvania district attorney Kevin Steele has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court following the overturned conviction of disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.
Cosby was released from prison in June of this year—not because the court ruled that he did not commit the crimes—but on a technicality concerning a previous DA.
After being convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018, Cosby’s conviction was overturned based on a “promise” by former prosecutor Bruce Castor. Castor chose to not pursue Cosby’s assault charges in 2005 that allegedly occurred before a related lawsuit. Cosby’s lawyers believed that Cosby should not have been charged later by Castor’s successor in 2015, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed.
However, in the new petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Steele’s office called the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling “a dangerous precedent.”
“A prosecution announcement not to file charges should not trigger due process protections against future criminal proceedings because circumstances could change, including new incriminating statements by the accused,” the prosecutor’s office says.
In a press release accompanying the filing, Steele argues: “The question presented to the Court is: ‘Where a prosecutor publicly announces that he will not file criminal charges based on lack of evidence, does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment transform that announcement into a binding promise that no charges will ever be filed, a promise that the target may rely on as if it were a grant of immunity?’”
This “promise” from Castor in 2005 involved related charges from Andrea Constand’s allegations. At the time, Castor decided not to levy those charges against Cosby and he issued a press release stating this decision. According to Variety, Cosby then gave deposition testimony in a civil lawsuit Constand had filed (in which she settled for $3.38 million), during which he acknowledged giving Quaaludes to other women. This deposition was later used by prosecutors in both of his criminal trials, the first of which resulted in a hung jury.
During the trial court hearing on the subject, it was found that Castor had not actually made a legally binding agreement. Castor argued that the press release counts as the written record of the agreement, however the press release does not include language about immunity from future prosecution.
Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, called the appeal a “pathetic last-ditch effort.”
“There is no merit to the DA’s request which centers on the unique facts of the Cosby case and has no impact on important federal questions of law,” Wyatt said in a statement. “This is a pathetic last-ditch effort that will not prevail. The Montgomery County’s DA’s fixation with Mr. Cosby is troubling to say the least.”
19 Comments
Counterpoint: overturning the court’s decision would set a terrible precedent as well. If new evidence arises naturally, that’s one thing, but in this case, you have a prosecutor giving assurances, and then someone confessing based in part on those assurances. If it’s overturned, it’s easy to envision a scenario where a cop tells a suspect “it’s okay, we’re not going to file charges, so just say you did it so we can all go home,” and then essentially eliciting a false confession. This isn’t a new eyewitness or DNA evidence; it’s testimony given because of the assurances given by the prosecutor. Overturning that could be very dangerous, especially to people who don’t have millions of dollars to hire the best possible defense attorneys.Don’t get me wrong; cosby is a piece of garbage who deserves to rot in prison. But that fact doesn’t make the precedent this would set any less bad.
(Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood lawyer who kinda/sorta remembers criminal procedure, and whose opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.)
Honestly, I don’t know what to think. I need Sam Waterson and Steven Hill to passionately hash this out then arrive at a crowd pleasing but legally dubious decision because it’s an election year.
Sorry but in this reality all we get is Arthur Branch telling Jack to kill the case because the constitution doesn’t explicitly prohibit sexual assault. 🙁
What about ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of creepiness’?
DUN-DUN!
Letting a serial rapist live his life mostly repercussion-free was the thing that was dangerous.
Engineering the situation such that a rapist confesses and the justice system provides no justice to the victims is a design flaw.
If it’s overturned, it’s easy to envision a scenario where a cop tells a suspect “it’s okay, we’re not going to file charges, so just say you did it so we can all go home,” and then essentially eliciting a false confession.They can already and do already do that. Cops are allowed to lie to suspects to illicit confessions. They can claim that they have DNA evidence even when it doesn’t exist to get a confession. Cops use the tactic a lot of time in traffic stops acting like they’re going to give someone a break on a ticket or something as long as the suspect ‘be honest’ with the cop. As long as they don’t infringe on the suspect’s constitutional rights, it’s A-OK. Overturning this just sets the precedence that a DA saying they won’t prosecute is not the same as an actual deal of immunity.
If it’s overturned, it’s easy to envision a scenario where a cop tells a
suspect “it’s okay, we’re not going to file charges, so just say you
did it so we can all go home,” and then essentially eliciting a false
confession.This already happens all the time, doesn’t it? Police are allowed to lie to suspects basically as much as they want, up to and including promises not to prosecute (which is at the discretion of the DA, not the police!) if the person will just admit to the crime. I don’t see how this decision being overturned would change that at all. (Don’t get me wrong: coerced and false confessions are horrible, and I believe that it should be against the law to introduce confessions of any kind as evidence in a trial.)Anyway, I doubt SCOTUS would agree with Cosby here; the DA didn’t promise never to file charges, he said that he wasn’t filing charges now because of the current lack of sufficient evidence. The notion that this then enjoins the state from ever filing charges, even if later evidence arises, is ludicrous. It doesn’t seem to be the case here that Cosby had a formalized agreement with the DA (immunity in exchange for testimony, for example).If SCOTUS did uphold this, what would likely happen is that no DA would ever make a public statement about declining to prosecute a case, since doing so would (evidently) permanently enjoin them or their successors from doing so in the future, which is self-evidently nonsense.
>he DA didn’t promise never to file charges, he said that he wasn’t filing charges now because of the current lack of sufficient evidence.This is not correct. Here’s a quote from the judgment which you can peruse yourself herehttps://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/J-100-2020mo%20-%20104821740139246918.pdf?cb=1>Notably, when District Attorney Castor decided not to prosecute Cosby, he
“absolutely” intended to remove “for all time” the possibility of prosecution, because “the
ability to take the Fifth Amendment is also for all time removed.” >Former D.A. Castor explained
to the court that he meant that a prosecution may be available only if other victims were
discovered, with charges related only to those victims, and without the use of Cosby’s
depositions in the Constand matter
I’ll assume for the sake of argument that Castor’s recollection of what he meant, and the apparently undocumented conversation he had with Phillips, is completely accurate. The problem is that the press release itself does not support this reading at all (it explicitly reserves the right to reconsider the decision later, and does not use language implying a permanent enjoinment of the state’s ability to prosecute). The other problem is that it’s unclear that Castor even had the power to do so; a DA can make an agreement with a defendant, which typically has to be approved by a judge, which can affect the state’s ability to prosecute. In this case, no such agreement was made. Also, even if Castor and Phillips both agreed that this was how the law worked, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically right; a court could of course decide that Castor’s press release had no such effect.What I said is accurate: Castor’s press release did not, in its language, express future enjoinment of any right to prosecute, even if that’s what Castor intended at the time. It’s possible that SCOTUS (if they even grant cert) might find that point irrelevant, and look only at the text of the press release and the subsequent decisions made by Cosby and Pennsylvania.
Did you even read the judgment I linked? I get that Cosby going free is an abhorrent outcome but you seem to be arguing that the appeal judges made an obvious error based on your extremely cursory analysis of the wording of the press release that conveniently ignores all of the other available evidence. I don’t really see how anyone who read the judgement could hold that view.
Yes, I read it (as well as the cert petition linked in the article). The linchpin seems to be that Castor’s press release was reasonably interpreted by Cosby to mean that he would never be prosecuted for the acts in question, because Castor later said his intent was to induce Cosby to testify in a civil trial without being able to invoke the Fifth Amendment, even though the plain language of the press release only vaguely alludes to civil remedies and does not mention the Fifth Amendment at all. Castor asserted in testimony that he figured that those in-the-know would be able to read between the lines, while the media and public would be mostly unaware of his intent.
The decision cites several cases involving plea bargaining, but none involving public (non-agreement) press releases like this one. The decision points out that Cosby never invoked the Fifth Amendment during the civil depositions (although he did refuse to answer certain questions, and was compelled by the court to answer them), and that this therefore demonstrates that he (foolishly*, in my view) assumed that the legal theory constructed by Castor and Phillips was correct, without attempting to test it before a court. If he had invoked the Fifth once, the court could have then asked Castor if he intended to prosecute, at which point he could have said no. This would have created a much stronger (essentially invincible) argument that Cosby’s deposition testimony could not be used against him.Ultimately the decision rests on the idea that Cosby’s detrimental reliance on the press release, whether or not that reliance was reasonable, precludes prosecution as a matter of due process. The cert petition asserts that reasonableness should be a criterion, while the decision says that it should not. I’m generally inclined to err on the side of defendants, and if SCOTUS can’t establish a solid foundation to find for Pennsylvania, then they should find for Cosby, even though, as we both agree, he’s reprehensible.*Phillips’s reliance on verbal conversation with Castor was foolish. The novel legal theory that Castor’s release would permanently preclude prosecution should have been something they took to a court, following PA’s statutes about immunity, in order to secure a written agreement not to prosecute. If a court wouldn’t approve it under those statutes (and it probably wouldn’t), then they should have signed a written agreement of some kind anyway. Failing that, the press release should have been explicit about why Castor was declining to prosecute, and could well have included language to the effect that they would never prosecute. And in any of these cases, Cosby should have immediately invoked the Fifth Amendment in the deposition, to actually test whether a court would allow it, proving before he gave incriminating testimony whether he would be able to invoke the Fifth. Failing to do so was a blunder.
See literally every cop while interviewing Henry Lee Lucas.
There’s also the issue here that they’re asking for the federal Supreme Court to overrule the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on its interpretation of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
It’s one thing to ask the federal courts to uphold rights that state courts have failed to recognise – it’s another thing to ask federal courts to REMOVE rights that the state courts have recognised…
I see where you’re coming from, but the fact that they didn’t have this deal explicitly laid out in writing seems like a loophole that could be used in this specific instance without jeopardizing the concept of immunity deals for testimony in the future (frankly, if all you have now is someone pinky promising not to prosecute, you should not take that deal).
“Loopholes” is not a great foundation for a justice system, but a known serial rapist who confessed to drugging women went criminally unpunished for decades here, so that ship has sailed, caught fire, and burned to the waterline.
Shouldn’t the actual process be getting something in writing from the cops/DA granting you immunity in exchange for honest testimony? As opposed to what happened here where one DA gave a press conference and said “we aren’t going to charge him” and somehow that became a legally binding protection?
If it’s overturned, it’s easy to envision a scenario where a cop tells a suspect “it’s okay, we’re not going to file charges, so just say you did it so we can all go home,” and then essentially eliciting a false confession.What? That’s not even in the realm of this. You’re “scenario” makes no sense and nobody would just “all go home.” The only thing this hinges on is Castor’s abject incompetence. He admitted, on the stand, that he didn’t pursue the criminal case so that Cosby, under presumed immunity, would incriminate himself and his victims would get huge civil payouts. Castor decided, as he’s said over and over again, that these victims would be “better off” getting some money than actual justice for their suffering. Not in small part because he was worried about reelection and how a high-profile prosecution may affect his chances. This is literally a DA who said, yeah, Cosby definitely raped women but it would be simpler for all involved if he just pays them off.Also, there was never any transactional immunity agreement signed. That’s the only way you get actual immunity. The idea that Castor’s public declining of pursuing charges, with no actual signed agreements, constitutes immunity is frightening if it stands.
Attorney Jennifer Bonjean and Bill Cosby, engaged in a “Who can make the silliest ‘Bill Cosby Face’” contest, outside of Cosby’s home on June 30, 2021
SCOTUS will eagerly take this case up to Divertor their wack-ass rulings rolling back abortion access/removing all remaining voter protections. (And they’ll let Serial Rapist Bill Cosby walk in the process.)