Prosecutors who believe Bill Cosby should be in prison are asking the US Supreme Court to review the ruling that released the now 84-year-old actor in June this year. That reports The New York Times.
The popular entertainer was arrested in 2015; he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand three times in his suburban Philadelphia home eleven years earlier.
Constand was a former Temple University employee who considered Cosby her mentor. At the time of the arrest, the actor had also been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by dozens of other women.
One of the first verdicts in the #metoo era
The assault prompted the jury to sentence Cosby in 2018 to between three and ten years in prison. That verdict, one of the first in the #metoo era, was considered a breakthrough.
Cosby appealed to the Pennsylvania Court of Appeals because a previous prosecutor had offered him a non-prosecution agreement. The court ruled in his favor and ruled in June this year that the jury’s verdict was invalid,
The quashing of the verdict is now being challenged by prosecutors. A spokesman for Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, called the decision to request a Supreme Court review “a pathetic last-ditch effort”.
Whether the federal Supreme Court will hear the case is highly questionable. The court dismisses the vast majority of petitions seeking review.
