Bill Cosby returns home from prison after overturning sexual assault conviction in court Reuters

Authors: Joseph Ax and Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters)-Bill Cosby was released from prison on Wednesday and returned home. Less than two hours after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault conviction, he said he should not have been subject to a non-prosecution agreement with the former district attorney. The allegations are older than 15 years ago.

After Cosby was convicted in 2018 and served three to 10 years in prison for more than two years, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a split ruling.

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said that 83-year-old Cosby was released from a state prison in Shippack, Pennsylvania by 2:30 pm (1830 GMT).

About an hour later, he arrived at the mansion in Elkins Park, a suburb of Philadelphia. Wearing a short-sleeved shirt, he crawled out of a white SUV, flashed a peace sign, and walked into the house with the help of another man.

This comedian and actor is best known for playing his lovely husband and father in the TV comedy series “The Cosby Show” in the 1980s, earning him the nickname “American Dad”.

But in decades, after dozens of women accused him of sexual assault, his reputation for family-friendliness was shattered. His conviction is widely regarded as a watershed in the #MeToo movement, which has led to a series of charges against powerful figures in Hollywood and beyond.

Cosby was found guilty of drug abuse and indecency in the home of Andrea Constand, an employee of Temple University, his alma mater, in 2004. Constant’s allegations are the only allegations against Cosby, and the age is not too high to initiate criminal proceedings.

The court’s decision clearly prohibits the prosecutor from retrialing Cosby.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele filed charges against Cosby in 2015. He issued a statement stating that the jury found Cosby guilty and Wednesday’s decision was not based on the facts of the case.

“I hope this decision will not affect the victims’ reports of sexual assaults,” he said. “We still believe that no one can be above the law-including those who are rich, famous and powerful.”

The response was quick, and many women participating in the #MeToo movement expressed shock at this decision.

“This is why women don’t come forward,” wrote E. Jean Carroll, the author who accused former President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s, on Twitter. Trump denied her claims.

Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing some of Cosby’s accusers, told CNN that she was “very disgusted and shocked” by the decision.

But Cosby’s co-star Felicia Rashad in the “Cosby Show” celebrated the ruling to correct the “misjudgment”.

A spokesperson for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘There is only one remedy’

The majority of the court’s ruling held that the state attorney Bruce Castor reached an agreement with Cosby’s lawyers in 2005 not to file criminal charges.

Therefore, Cosby could not avoid testifying in a civil lawsuit brought by Constante against him, because the defendant could only refuse to testify when facing criminal prosecution.

In the sworn testimony, Cosby admitted to giving women sedatives to promote sexual contact, but he insisted that this was consensual.

His admission, which a judge later unsealed in 2015, helped form the basis for criminal charges later that year, when Steele, who had just been elected district attorney, charged Cosby days before the statute of limitations was set to expire.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that the prosecution basically violated Custer’s earlier promise not to prosecute Cosby and violated his due process rights.

“There is only one remedy that can completely restore Cosby to its original state,” Judge David Wecht wrote with a majority of four judges. “He must be released and any future prosecutions must be prohibited against these specific allegations.”

A dissenting judge said that Cosby should stay in jail, while the other two said that prosecutors should be allowed to retry him without relying on contaminated evidence.

During Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, Custer made national headlines in February as a member of former President Donald Trump’s legal defense team. The former prosecutor issued a rambling opening statement that drew sharp criticism from several senators, including Trump’s Republican supporters.

Cosby’s first trial ended in 2017 with a jury pending, when the jurors were unable to reach a consensus on his guilt. But he was found guilty in the second trial after Judge Steven O’Neill allowed the prosecutor to summon five previous accusers—four more than the first trial.

With these witnesses, the prosecutor argued that Cosby’s attack on Constant was a well-rehearsed crime he had honed for decades: he made friends with young women and acted as a mentor, but he was often involved in drugs. Sexually assaulted them with help.