Okay, let's talk Cosby.

It looks like the prosecutors fucked up from the beginning and his lawyers probably knew it.

She just wants those sweet residual checks from the Nick At Nite reruns back.

What never needs to be played ever again is the record where he talks about the "Spanish fly".

Well, it won't get those two years of his life back, or erase the fact that 80+ women came forward to speak on it.

Procedure wasn't followed but still a rapist

Well, I absolutely don't want him to get get murdered now.

"Murder" is what happens to people that don't deserve it.

So according to what I'm reading, here's what happened:

Back in 2005, a local prosecutor told Cosby's attorneys they weren't going to prosecute him for a sexual assault.

Based on that, Cosby went ahead and testified in a civil suit by the alleged victim and admitted he gave women Quaaludes as part of having sex with them.

The local prosecutor's replacement went and prosecuted Cosby.

The court ruled that the replacement was bound by the first prosecutor's promise not to prosecute and that it was fundamentally unfair to have him think that he was not going to be prosecuted for the alleged rape and then prosecute him years later.

It seems to me there are a few fundamental problems with this reasoning.

It doesn't seem to be right that one prosecutor's decision on a case should necessarily bind his successors.

It also seems like the way to deal with it would be to exclude the evidence that he gave because he thought he was in the clear, rather than to rule that Cosby had been so prejudiced that he couldn't be tried.

This part does it for me.

Side note: Is there ever only "one" prosecutor, who is the one "on the hook" for all the cases at a given time? Or are there several prosecutors working in tandem? If the latter, it sounds like one prosecutor making a promise and another one saying "nope, that was the other person" is akin to cops being allowed to lie to people.

I always thought it was the office, not the individual.

Depends what the individual did in the office. Hence the Cosby allegations.

I think what it comes down to is there is only this one case so if you exclude the evidence, then that’s all she wrote, there is no other case.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, he is free at last.

*sigh*
Zip up your pants...

So generally, each county has a prosecutor's office that handles the overwhelming percent of crimes that happen in that county. They are called district attorneys, state's attorneys, commonwealth attorneys or the like. There's one top DA per county who is the final word for the office.

But there are are other jurisdictions that overlap. Hypothetically, there is a U.S. attorney whose office would cover the area. And there's a state attorney general whose jurisdiction covers the whole state.

So a problem I have with this case is that even if we are to assume the original district attorney had made a binding promise to not prosecute Cosby, that wouldn't shield him from all criminal prosecution, because there are other prosecutors who could still have potentially brought criminal charges against him.

Another problem is the notion that Cosby relied on the promise to not be prosecuted to give testimony in the civil trial. Unless he had the worst attorneys in the world, there is no chance whatsoever that Cosby would have pleaded his 5th Amendment right to not testify in his civil trial. Because in civil court, a jury can hold a witness's decision to not testify against him. If Cosby had taken the Fifth, he basically would have to do it for almost all questions. If you put him before a jury and asked him questions and he pleaded five for each one for literally an hour or more, there is no telling how much a jury would have awarded his alleged victim.

Q: Mr. Cosby, when did you meet my client?
A: I plead the Fifth Amendment on the grounds that my answer may incriminate me.

Q: Mr. Cosby, did you want to sexually assault my client from the moment you first met her?
A: I plead the Fifth Amendment on the grounds that my answer may incriminate me.

Q: Mr. Cosby, did you hatch a scheme to drug my client so that you could sexually assault my client?
A: I plead the Fifth Amendment on the grounds that my answer may incriminate me.

There were a number of alleged sexual assaults that preceded this one. There's a decent argument that those should not have come into evidence in this case, but the Court did not reach it because they just ruled on the immunity/detrimental reliance one.

Even if hypothetically, the information from Cosby's civil deposition was excluded, there would still be evidence from the alleged victim, including records she made of conversations with Cosby. Whether that was enough to meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is going to be different in various people's eyes.

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/07/24

So.... am I allowed to have pudding pops now? Or not?

[sits down and pulls out piece of paper and pen]

"Dear God,
It's me, Amaris, and if you respond "Amaris, never heard of him," I'm going to kick you in the holy rollers.
Now listen: remember that time you told me 'thou shalt not steal,' and so I didn't steal that Greatest Hits of Tony Orlando cassette back in 93?
Yeah, well now you owe me a favor."

They're discontinued.
Not because of Cosby.
Somehow, even though everyone was inhaling them, they didn't turn a profit.

https://www.mashed.com/223844/the-real-reason-pudding-pops-were-discontinued/

It's all about the application of discretionary power. A Police Officer does not have to make an arrest even when a crime is committed in front of them, unless they have an order from the Court. A prosecutor does not have to indict and take to trial a case even if they have overwhelming evidence, unless they have a yes bill from a Grand Jury. I had to have a conversation today with my City Manager that no one, not even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, can force me to issue a warrant or retract a denial of charges. If I say something is not going to court, it's not going to court. End of discussion.

The X County District Attorney's Office is bigger than any one person. It existed before the current office holder was there and it will exist after the current office holder leaves. But, if it is the decision of the OFFICE of the District Attorney, then that is binding on whomever holds that office, in perpetuity.

As near as I can tell, this is something that is not settled law in this context. I skimmed over a lot of the decision and it talks a lot about defendants being able to rely on plea agreements and even things said during negotiations for plea agreements.

It makes sense that if District Attorney A makes a formal agreement or even discusses one with a defendant, District Attorney B can't just be like, "Fuck that, I'm going back on that agreement."

But that's not what we have here. The original DA did not make an agreement with Cosby. That was the finding of the trial court and the Supreme Court is stuck with that.

Certainly a prosecutor can say "I'm not going to prosecute this case" and then the same or different prosecutor can say "Oh wait, I totally am." Take the Ahmaud Arbery case, for example. Early on at least one set of prosecutors thought there was not enough to bring charges and then recused themselves. Then different prosecutors brought charges. It would be IMO a ridiculous ruling that because the defendants thought they were in the clear from the earlier set of prosecutors declining to charge that any statements they made afterwards could not be used against them in a criminal prosecution. It's slightly different because we're talking about different prosecutor agencies, but it is the same principle if you believe the detrimental reliance leading to a due process violation argument.

In the Cosby case, the DA said in a press release that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Cosby, and he said/thought privately that by doing so he would clear the path to the civil suit that the complaining witness was contemplating since he believed his statement of non-prosecution would mean that Cosby would not plead the Fifth. Another place where I think the PA Supreme Court erred is in concluding that as a matter of law Cosby relied on the statements of the DA in deciding to sit for his deposition and answer the questions. The trial court felt otherwise, but the Supreme Court found that "legally erroneous" without really spelling out why. It certainly didn't spell out facts that made it IMO clearly so. At best, there needed to be some facts developed that showed that the statement that he was not going to be prosecuted caused him to waive his Fifth Amendment right as opposed to the common sense notion that repeatedly invoking the Fifth would almost certainly guarantee him losing the civil lawsuit in a big way.

Good thread worth reading

@Paladin is thrilled (based on his history of defending rapists).

*White rapists

Suuuuure he did.

Which one?
Reagan?

Oh, good point.