The Bill Cosby social media debate among armchair legal experts is #BLM vs. #MeToo, Save Jerseyans. Twitter has been even more boorish than usual following Wednesday’s bombshell PA Supreme Court ruling tossing Cosby’s conviction and barring a new prosecution.
Life must be confusing as all hell when you allow identity politics to shape all of your positions! That’s not a life I want to lead, and I’d submit it’s not a healthy formula for a healthy liberal democracy.
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Keep it simple: we can’t jail people, even terrible people, when their 5th Amendment rights were trashed.
The relevant facts don’t leave much room for doubt. Prior to the criminal case against Cosby, way back in 2005, the former television star made an agreement with then-prosecutor (and future Trump impeachment lawyer) Bruce Castor to testify in a civil matter brought by accuser Andrea Constand. The exchange? Cosby would not be prosecuted.
Flash forward a decade. A different prosecutor charges Cosby anyway, and Cosby’s deposition testimony is employed by the prosecution against him. He’s convicted in 2018 based, in part, on that testimony.
This is a clear violation of Cosby’s 5th Amendment rights.
The 5th Amendment doesn’t care what color you are.
The 5th Amendment doesn’t “believe” – or not believe – “all women” as a matter of course.
Cosby’s constitutional rights were clearly and egregiously violated. Cosby the U.S. citizen, not the comedy superstar. Presumably, he would have never agreed to testify in that 16-year-old civil proceeding if he knew his testimony would, contrary to the state’s original position, be used against him. Cosby could’ve simply said “I plea the 5th” and that would’ve been the end of that particular issue.
Is Cosby innocent? That’s an entirely different question. Draw your own conclusions just like the jury did. Like it or not, we have a system built upon that famous 1769 principle espoused by William Blackstone: “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” It’s a system I happen to believe is far from perfect but still far better than anything else designed by man to date.
Cosby and his supporters believe he’s an innocent “one.”
Most people believe he’s counted among the aforementioned ten guilty men.
None of that matters in the end. The Constitution is all that matters. The 5th Amendment isn’t “a technicality.” It’s a critical protection against the whims of an overreaching government; the framers were all-too-familiar with the need for a 5th Amendment from their experiences with the British Crown.
Check your political bullshit and remember that. You’ll sleep a little bit better.
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