The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned comedian Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction after determining that a previous agreement Cosby had with a county prosecutor regarding a statement made in a civil lawsuit should not have been entered into the record, the Associated Press reports.
[Update (1:27 p.m. ET): The former Montgomery County (PA) district attorney who entered into the agreement with Cosby to not use his civil case testimony in a criminal trial was Bruce Castor, who would later serve as one of Donald Trump’s lawyers in his second impeachment trial.]
The 83-year-old Cosby had served two years of a three-to-ten year sentence for an alleged sexual assault he committed after drugging his victim. Cosby has claimed that the encounter was consensual, even though the victim had testified that she was incapable of giving consent because she was drugged.
The state supreme court ruled that testimony stemming from witnesses named in the civil suit–brought by a different victim of Cosby’s who had other women provide sworn affidavits in the case–unjustly tainted the trial because Cosby was not criminally charged in those earlier cases. They also said that an agreement Cosby had with the previous Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor to exclude his statements in the civil suit, which had put under seal, had been violated. Castor had declined to prosecute Cosby even though multiple women had accused Cosby of sexual assault.
Armed with the depositions, newly-elected Montgomery County prosecutor Kevin Steele charged Cosby again, just days before the statute of limitations on his crime was set to run out.
The state supreme court stated that the inclusion of the unsealed statements, which led to five more women testifying about Cosby’s actions in the retrial, was improper even though a lower court had ruled that it could be admitted because it showed a pattern in Cosby’s behavior.
The eponymous star of a popular 1980s sitcom, Cosby was viewed dubbed as “America’s Dad” for his role as the head of the Huxtable family. A stand-up comedian who refused to use curse words or sexual innuendo in his act since the 1960s, Cosby’s post-television career featured him giving lectures on how young Black men should act to gain respect.