Last year, a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby should not have faced charges because a previous district attorney had promised in 2005 not to prosecute him.
The Pennsylvania high court’s ruling freed Cosby from prison after nearly three years.
That court said that Cosby believed he was operating under an immunity agreement offered by a prosecutor when the entertainer provided testimony that was damaging and led to his conviction.
Prosecutors denied the existence of such a deal, although Bruce Castor, then district attorney of suburban Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, said in a press release in 2005 that he had decided not to prosecute Cosby.
The press release said Castor’s decision was based on an analysis of the law and evidence, and that “under the circumstances of this case” a conviction would be “unattainable.”
Andrea Constand, an employee at Cosby’s alma mater, Temple University, accused the actor of drugging and molesting her in 2004. The two later settled a civil lawsuit.
The criminal case was reopened in 2015 after a judge unsealed parts of Cosby’s deposition during the civil suit. That decision came shortly after a dozen women came forward with allegations that Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them. The number of women making similar charges has grown since then.
A new Montgomery County district attorney brought charges, and Cosby was convicted.
But a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court said the use of Cosby’s deposition violated his due process rights.
Current Montgomery District Attorney Kevin R. Steele asked the U.S. Supreme Court to get involved.
“The press release said that no charges would be filed, not that they would never be filed, and indeed, it could be read to say that the prosecutor could reconsider if new evidence was found,” Steele wrote in his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. “For Cosby to provide such evidence in supposed reliance on a vague press release may well have been detrimental — but it was not reasonable.”
Steele added: “The issue here is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment transforms this bare announcement into a binding promise never to prosecute, upon which the accused has a right to rely in perpetuity.”
Cosby attorney Jennifer Bonjean responded that Steele was misrepresenting the Pennsylvania court’s decision by saying the promise came only in a press release.
The Pennsylvania court relied “on a robust, factually unique record when it concluded that the district attorney made an ‘unconditional promise’ not to prosecute Cosby for the purpose of inducing him to forfeit his Fifth Amendment right in an anticipated civil litigation,” Bonjean wrote.
She added that the district attorney “offers no compelling reason for this Court to disrupt the state supreme court’s decision which is legally uncontroversial and based on a ‘rare, if not entirely unique’ set of circumstances unlikely to occur again in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or elsewhere.”
Steele said in a statement that it had been a long shot to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state court’s decision, but it was “the right thing to do.”
He thanked Constand for coming forward and said “all crime victims deserve to be heard, treated with respect and be supported through their day in court.”
Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt told the Associated Press that the court’s decision not to review the case “is truly a victory for Mr. Cosby, but it shows that cheating will never get you far in life, and the corruption that lies within Montgomery County District’s Attorney Office has been brought to the center stage of the world.”
Wyatt also told the AP that Cosby remains in good health despite being legally blind. He said that “many people are calling for projects for him” and that he is considering a final stand-up tour.
Amy Cheng contributed to this report.