By Senator Chris Coons - Sen. Coons and Bill Cosby at Joshua Harvest Church in Wilmington, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37013071

Disgraced comic Bill Cosby is demanding to be paid millions in compensation for two years served in prison on a rape conviction that was later overturned.

He is also demanding the judge and prosecutor in his case resign. 

“Mr. Cosby was given an unwanted two-year and ten-month vacation that he never ask for. His constitutional rights were abolished, his due process was stripped away from him,” Cosby’s representative, Andrew Wyatt, told NewsNation Now.

“He’s due millions and millions of dollars. As Mr. Cosby said to me today, ‘I feel that this district attorney and Judge Steven O’Neill and Kevin Steele [Montgomery County district attorney] should resign effective immediately.”

In many states, people who served time in prison on convictions later overturned can sue for compensation.  Pennsylvania, where Cosby was convicted, has no such law, but Cosby could possibly sue the state in federal court.

Cosby was convicted in 2018 on charges of raping a woman in 1984 and sentenced to three to ten years in prison.

The case against Cosby was built on his admission, made in a 2005 civil case, that he drugged and had sex with the victim.  Armed with the admission made in court, prosecutors indicted, tried, and convicted Cosby on criminal charges.

However, it was revealed Cosby made the admission under an agreement with prosecutors that it not be used in any criminal action against him.  So long as he faced a potential criminal charge, Cosby could have refused to testify in the civil lawsuit against him.  

By agreeing to not seek criminal charges, Cosby could no longer invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify, leading Cosby to settle with the victim for nearly $3.5 million.

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction in June, citing the violated agreement, ruling that allowing a criminal conviction on evidence secured under a non-prosecution agreement violated the United States Constitution and jeopardized the rights of other accused people.

Cosby had served nearly three years of the three-to-ten year sentence.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AmericanActionNews.com




Michael Brigham has written for American Action News since the summer of 2019. His areas of expertise include foreign affairs, government, and politics, but regardless of the subject matter, he has a nose and an insatiable appetite for news. In his free time, he enjoys reading nonfiction, watching a mix of comedies and true crime documentaries, and spending time away from the swamp hiking in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Comments

  1. Only in America where a sex pervert can abuse the law, make a deal that protects him from prosecution and then demand large damages…….

  2. What a Idoit Cosby turn out to be. Anyone who deserve any money are the women that he sexually abuse. He doesn’t deserve one plug nickel.

  3. You don’t get twenty years to decide whether someone raped you! They either did it or they didn’t!

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