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| Money and connections outrank justice every time. What a disgrace. | |
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Yes and no. As
this opinion piece points out, the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality. Not all defendents have the deep pockets to hire lawyers who can find the loopholes. Technically speaking, justice was served (to him) by the verdict being overturned because his due process rights had been violated.
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| I’m really struggling to understand how an ‘agreement with a previous prosecutor’ can trump a court decision.
The facts, apparently, are irrelevant. | |
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It is complicated. The original prosecutor did not feel he could get a jury to find Cosby guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In order to get some justice for one victim, he decided not to do a
criminal prosecution and publicly announced that decision. This then meant that when a
civil complaint was brought, Cosby would legally not be able to take the 5th amendment in his defense - because the risk of criminal prosecution based on his own words was removed.
According to the former DA's testimony:
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| ...The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that a person may not be compelled to give evidence against themselves. So you can’t subpoena somebody and make them testify that they did something illegal...So the way you remove that from a witness is if you want to, and what I did in this case is I made the decision as the sovereign that Mr. Cosby would not be [criminally] prosecuted no matter what. As a matter of law, that then made it so that he could not take the Fifth Amendment...in the subsequent civil suit... | |
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A subsequent DA decided
10 years later to use the civil testimony in a criminal trial anyway, with the same victim. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. So the DA tried again, had even more witnesses from the 1970s and 80s admitted, and that is where Cosby was convicted - in part using his own statements from the civil trial in which he
wasn't allowed to invoke the 5th amendment. That's where Cosby's due process rights were violated.
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For those that can't get behind the paywall, there are opinion pieces and legal analyses everywhere. You can also read the decision itself (
PDF), which is interesting, and far clearer than any summary I've read. But not everyone wants to read a 79-page decision.
Important snippet from the PSC decision:
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| ...For the reasons detailed below, we hold that, when a prosecutor makes an unconditional promise of non-prosecution, and when the defendant relies upon that guarantee to the detriment of his constitutional right not to testify, the principle of fundamental fairness that undergirds due process of law in our criminal justice system demands that the promise be enforced. | |
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| There's nothing to rehabilitate him from because the verdict was ruled unlawful voided, it's as if it never happened.
So no, legally he's not guilty. | |
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Legally, correct. Morally, he's not the America's Dad everyone thought him to be.
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