Supreme Court Won’t Review Decision That Led To Bill Cosby’s Release

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a decision that led to the release of Bill Cosby last year.

Pennsylvania prosecutors had sought a review of a state Supreme Court decision that overturned Cosby’s conviction on sexual assault charges. He was released in June.

The high court on Monday declined to review the case (read it here).

Prosecutors had filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, arguing that “the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s expansion of the Due Process Clause goes far beyond anything contemplated by this Court.”

Cosby’s legal team lashed out at Montgomery County, PA, prosecutors for filing the petition, calling it “a pathetic last-ditch effort that will not prevail.”

Cosby was convicted in 2018 of sexual assault of former Temple University employee Andrea Constand. Cosby has maintained that they engaged in consensual relations.

But on June 30, the state Supreme Court found fault with the fact that in 2005, then-Montgomery County D.A. Bruce Castor, after investigating Constand’s claim, declined to prosecute and announced the decision in a press release, “thereby allowing Cosby to be forced to testify in a subsequent civil action, under penalty of perjury, without the benefit of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.”

“Unable to invoke any right not to testify in the civil proceedings, Cosby relied upon the district attorney’s declination and proceeded to provide four sworn depositions,” Judge David Wecht wrote in the majority opinion.

Cosby had been serving his sentence at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Phoenix, and was released later that same day.

As unlikely as it was that the Supreme Court would take the case, prosecutors contended that the state Supreme Court decision “construes the federal constitution, it is poised to transform similar decisions not to prosecute into effective grants of immunity in other states.”

Cosby’s spokesman Andrew Wyatt, in a statement, said, “This is truly a victory for Mr. Cosby, but it shows that cheating will never get you far in life, and the corruption that lies within Montgomery County District’s Attorney Office has been brought to the center stage of the world.”

The Montgomery County D.A. hasn’t comment on the SCOTUS decision, yet.