Bill Cosby’s conviction overturned: Supreme Court seized
Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court in June. The American Supreme Court is called upon to examine this decision.
Bill Cosby was released on June 30 following a technical ruling from the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court.
Getty Images via AFP
A US prosecutor has appealed to the US Supreme Court over the overturning this summer of the conviction of American television superstar Bill Cosby, convicted in 2018 of sexual assault, his services announced on Monday.
“The United States Supreme Court can redress what we consider a grave injustice,” said Kevin Steele, a Montgomery County, Pa., Attorney, in a statement announcing the Nov. 24 filing of the appeal.
Bill Cosby was released on June 30 following a technical ruling from the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, seen by many as a snub to the #MeToo movement. At the time of his release, the comedian had been in jail since 2018 for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a woman who worked for Temple University in Philadelphia in 2004.
In its decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recalled that the first prosecutor in charge of the case had decided not to prosecute Bill Cosby in criminal proceedings, while inciting him to testify in civil proceedings brought by the plaintiff, which he said. had agreed to do.
“Bad consequences”
During this hearing, Bill Cosby had admitted to having given Andrea Constand a powerful sedative and to having carried out touching on her, considering that she was consenting because she had not reacted. However, this testimony was then used against him during his criminal trial, when a new prosecutor, Kevin Steele in this case, decided to relaunch the case years later.
“Requesting a review by the (Supreme Court) was the right thing to do,” Kevin Steele said Monday, denouncing the “negative consequences” that a precedent “establishing that a press release from a prosecutor apparently now confers on the immunity”.
Bill Cosby had, in his own Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeal leading to his conviction being overturned, presented a 2005 press release as evidence of the first prosecutor’s decision not to prosecute him.
“Last pathetic effort”
A spokesperson for the actor, now 84, criticized Monday a “last pathetic effort”, in a statement quoted by the American press.
William Henry Cosby, Jr, by his full name, was sentenced in 2018 to a minimum sentence of three years in prison (10 years at the most), and had already spent almost three behind bars.
Considered the embodiment of the ideal father in his television show, the actor, one of the first African-Americans to break into the small screen, has been accused by some sixty women of sexual assault and sometimes rape, covered by prescription.
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