PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned Bill Cosby’s 2019 sexual assault conviction, ruling that a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor should have prevented him from being charged in the case.
The 83-year-old comedian has served more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence in a state prison in Montgomery County, after his conviction on charges he drugged and molested Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004.
He was recently denied parole, in part over his refusal to admit guilt or acknowledge any remorse for crimes he maintains he did not commit.
The case had a complicated history that began in 2005 when Constand first reported the alleged assault to then-Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr., who ultimately declined to file charges in this case.
But Castor’s successors reopened the case and charged Cosby in 2015, just days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired and amid a barrage of new accusations from women across the country.
At the time, Castor objected to the new prosecution, saying he’d struck a deal with Cosby and his lawyers not to prosecute him for Constand’s assault if Cosby agreed to sit for a deposition in a civil case she had filed against him.
Excerpts from that deposition were ultimately used against Cosby at trial.
He was charged in late 2015, when a prosecutor armed with newly unsealed evidence — Cosby’s damaging deposition from her lawsuit — arrested him days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.
