His sex-crimes conviction vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Bill Cosby is free after just serving two years behind bars on a three-to-10-year sentence. Free does not mean innocent. His victims and the wider world know precisely what he did.
Cutting Cosby loose after his conviction for drugging and groping Andrea Constand was, a split high court said, a matter of basic fairness in criminal prosecution. One, because the court let five women testify about their experiences with Cosby in the 1980s, a decision the majority said tainted the outcome at trial. Two, because of the admittance of key evidence from a 2015 civil deposition, during which the megastar admitted under oath that he had drugged women he wanted to grope. Prosecutors obtained the testimony after unwisely giving Cosby an oral commitment that he would never be charged. Then along came another elected district attorney, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, breaking his predecessor’s pledge.
Prosecutors should keep promises made by their predecessors. But the erasure on such grounds of a hard-won conviction of a man accused of molesting and otherwise mistreating 60 women sends a chilling signal that the cards remain stacked against sex-crime survivors.
This was no mere he said, she said case. It was he said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said. Count them and weep.
