‘Severe Obsession’ Is Driving Bill Cosby Prosecutor to Appeal Comedian’s Freedom to U.S. Supreme Court

When Kevin Steele ran for Montgomery County District Attorney in 2015, much of his campaign centered on one theme: prosecute Bill Cosby.

Many, including his opponent and former District Attorney Bruce Castor, called the centerpiece theme unethical.

Steele did win the election and immediately formed a formidable tandem with Judge Steven O’Neil in securing a conviction against Cosby following a second trial in 2018.

Now, nearly six months after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction, Steele has taken the unusual approach of appealing to the United States Supreme Court.

The district attorney wants the nation’s highest court to intervene in a non-federal matter to overturn the state court’s decision and send Cosby back to prison.

Satisfying the mob

Cosby served just two months shy of his minimum 3-to-10-year prison sentence when the state Supreme Court determined that the prosecution violated his constitutional rights and that Steele acted “reprehensibly” when trying the entertainer.

“Severe obsession,” Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt wrote of Steele in a statement this week.

“Unwilling to accept its epic loss in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Montgomery County District Attorney has now filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Wyatt remarked.

“In short, the district attorney asks the U.S. Supreme Court to throw the Constitution out the window, as it did, to satisfy the #metoo mob. There is no merit to the request which centers on the unique facts of the Cosby case and has no impact on important federal questions of law.”

After vacating Cosby’s conviction in June, Chief Justice Max Baer blasted Steele for going back on an agreement Cosby struck with former District Attorney Bruce Castor.

The agreement stipulated that a civil deposition by the famed comedian used in a civil case was off-limits in any potential criminal trial.

“[Steele] didn’t just break the deal. He broke the rules,”

Chief Justice Baer asserted. “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.”

He emphasized that the court’s decision wasn’t to protect Cosby but “13 million Pennsylvanians against that kind of conduct.”

Comfortable Cosby

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,” he said.

Cosby won his freedom on June 29 after spending nearly three years in prison on a 2018 conviction of indecent aggravated assault.

Cosby and his team said the ruling wasn’t technical.

“You’re sitting in a room trying to explain something, and there is a knock on the door. You say, ‘who is it?’ ‘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,” Cosby said.

“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?”

The Supreme Court's role

Despite Castor providing written affidavits directly to Steele and offering his testimony in pretrial hearings, Steele incredulously claimed he didn’t know a previous deal existed between the state and Cosby.

Efforts to reach Steele were unsuccessful.

Castor has told the Black Press that Steele should never have prosecuted Cosby. The former district attorney has asserted that he didn’t find the complaining witness against Cosby credible enough for a successful prosecution.

“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,” Cosby said.

“They got on these ships, but you were criminals, and people signed on to look after wealthy people’s findings. So 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.”

Several legal experts said this week that the U.S. Supreme Court typically doesn’t wade into the rulings of a state’s high court unless it conflicts with the decisions of other state high courts or the federal court of appeals.

“This is a pathetic last-ditch effort that will not prevail,” Wyatt insisted. “The Montgomery County District Attorney’s fixation with Mr. Cosby is troubling, to say the least.”

This article was originally posted on NNPA