Actor Bill Cosby to be released from prison after his conviction and sentence was overturned
Hollywood actor, Bill Cosby, will be released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 s*xual assault conviction, finding fault with the way that prosecutors pursued a case against him after earlier declining to file charges.
A representative for Cosby is already on route to pick up the actor from prison and is expected to see him released by mid-afternoon Eastern time, ABC reports.
Cosby was sentenced in September 2018 to three to 10 years in state prison for allegedly drugging and s*xually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004.
The 83-year-old actor, who has been serving time at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Phoenix, has maintained that they engaged in consensual relations.
Last year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear two points in Cosby’s appeal to overturn his 2018 s*xual assault conviction.
One was the admission into trial of “prior bad acts” witnesses and Cosby’s 2005-2006 quaalude deposition. The appeal argued that the trial judge erred in allowing Cosby’s prior deposition about using quaaludes during consensual s*xual encounters with women in the 1970s at trial.
The second point was a written agreement from previous Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor not to criminally prosecute Cosby in the Constand case. Castor had testified that while he was district attorney, he promised Cosby he would not file criminal charges if the entertainer would testify in a civil lawsuit Constand filed against Cosby in 2005.
Cosby testified during four days of depositions by Constand’s attorneys, and the civil lawsuit was settled for more than $3 million in 2006. Prosecutor Kevin R. Steele later brought criminal charges against Cosby in 2015 after succeeding Castor as the county’s district attorney.
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