“What we said is we’re not gonna let the commonwealth, the state through the district attorneys to engage in that kind of reprehensible bait and switch,” Justice Baer asserted.
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent@StacyBrownMedia
While social media and many who still have not understood the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s conviction continue to mislabel their decision as a “technicality,” the chief justice remarkably refuted those claims.
He also blasted Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, saying the case was a case of “bait and switch.”
“[Steele] didn’t just break the deal [Cosby had with former prosecutor Bruce Castor], he broke the rules,” Chief Justice Max Baer told Philadelphia’s local ABC News affiliate.
“What we said is we’re not gonna let the commonwealth, the state through the district attorneys to engage in that kind of reprehensible bait and switch,” Justice Baer asserted.
He emphasized that the court’s decision wasn’t to protect Cosby but the “13 million Pennsylvanians against that kind of conduct.”
Justice Baer concluded that it wasn’t the Supreme Court’s duty to find guilt or innocence on the part of Cosby. However, what the court did find was an illegal prosecution on the part of Steele.
“What we found was what the state did was inappropriate,” Justice Baer insisted.
Cosby won his freedom on June 29 after spending nearly three years in prison after a 2018 conviction of indecent aggravated assault.
The comedian and his team have since argued with those who have called the decision by the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction a technicality.
“You’re sitting in a room trying to explain something, and there is a knock on the door. You say, ‘who is it?’ [The response is], ‘It is the truth.’ So, people start jumping out of the window,” Cosby told the Black Press in his only extensive interview since his release.
“The court’s decision was not a technicality,” said Cosby. “These people sound like they haven’t read what the judges have written. It’s not a technicality. These [detractors] don’t want to know anything. It’s like the woman who said she knows five women that I drugged and raped. Well, where are they?”
Steele responded to Justice Baer.
Despite former prosecutor Bruce Castor providing written affidavits directly to Steele and offering his testimony in pre-trial hearings, Steele incredulously claimed he didn’t know a previous deal existed between the commonwealth and Cosby.
“To be very clear, prosecutors, in this case, did not believe there was an agreement not to prosecute or immunity for the defendant at the time we moved forward on the case, and we do not believe it now,” Steele told ABC News. “If we had believed there was an agreement or immunity, we would not have moved forward in our attempt to bring Cosby to justice.”
Meanwhile, Cosby has already begun plans to resume his stand-up career.
He plans to appear at an autism event in August to entertain those supporting that cause.
The “I-Spy” legend is also taking part in a documentary about his life and trials produced by former ABC Good Morning America producer Michelle Major.
“There’s a big smile on my face,” Cosby insisted. “A big smile on my face because I was there.
“I know what happened, and I’m watching and hearing these fascists and Nazis, and I watched them really come out of the woodworks as termites. The infestation of when [former President] Donald Trump came through, and they just let it all hang out. That’s who they are.
“That’s who their ancestors are. They want their ancestors to be people who came here for religious freedoms after being persecuted – but by whom? Things weren’t right in dear old England.
“They got on these ships, but you were criminals, and people signed on to look after wealthy people’s findings. Christopher Columbus got as lost as a White man can get, but got off the boat, took a flag, and said he would name this and so forth and so on.”
