After being in prison for nearly three years, 83-year-old comedian Bill Cosby was released on June 30 after Pennsylvania’s supreme court overturned his sexual assault conviction. To be clear, the decision doesn’t exonerate Cosby but strikes down his conviction on constitutional grounds.
Sixty women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault in incidents occurring from the early 1960s (when Cosby was a young comedian and TV star on the rise) to the late 2000s.
The women tell similar stories: They say Cosby either drugged them or that they lost consciousness and awoke to discover or suspect they’d been assaulted. This pattern of behavior flew under the radar for years, but the allegations gained more attention right ahead of the Me Too movement.
Cosby was convicted of assaulting just one woman: Andrea Constand. However, it’s still possible another prosecutor will pursue cases involving other women.
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains, Cosby’s release is the result of a “rambling” and “duplicative” court opinion. A press release that the district attorney sent out in 2005 regarding Costand’s allegations against Cosby — combined with Cosby’s later, incriminating testimony in a civil lawsuit — had the same effect as a formal immunity deal.
Without intervention from the US Supreme Court, that conviction is likely to remain off the table. And under the Pennsylvania court ruling, Cosby cannot be retried on the same charges.
Author: Ian Millhiser
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