Bill Cosby, Britney, and a tale of two American justice systems | Arwa Mahdawi
A tale of two justice systems
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune and an expensive lawyer can get away with almost anything. See as exhibit one: Bill Cosby. On Wednesday, Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned the disgraced actor’s sexual assault conviction on a legal technicality. Cosby had served two years of a three to ten-year sentence for a 2004 encounter with accuser Andrea Constand; before Wednesday’s surprise reversal he had been expected to serve the maximum time after vowing he wasn’t going to show any remorse for a crime he says he didn’t commit.
It is, the statute of limitations for all the accusers with enough evidence to bring a case had passed by the time they went public with the allegations. All except Constand. Now, according to Wednesday’s ruling, Cosby cannot be retried for Constand’s assault. In a the court said overturning the guilty verdict and blocking any further prosecution “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”
