Bill Cosby's release ruling is up for appeal at the Supreme Court

Pennsylvania district attorney Kevin Steele has filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court following the overturned conviction of disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

Cosby was released from prison in June of this year—not because the court ruled that he did not commit the crimes—but on a technicality concerning a previous DA.

After being convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018, Cosby’s conviction was overturned based on a “promise” by former prosecutor Bruce Castor. Castor chose to not pursue Cosby’s assault charges in 2005 that allegedly occurred before a related lawsuit. Cosby’s lawyers believed that Cosby should not have been charged later by Castor’s successor in 2015, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed.

However, in the new petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Steele’s office called the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling “a dangerous precedent.”

“A prosecution announcement not to file charges should not trigger due process protections against future criminal proceedings because circumstances could change, including new incriminating statements by the accused,” the prosecutor’s office says.

In a press release accompanying the filing, Steele argues: “The question presented to the Court is: ‘Where a prosecutor publicly announces that he will not file criminal charges based on lack of evidence, does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment transform that announcement into a binding promise that no charges will ever be filed, a promise that the target may rely on as if it were a grant of immunity?’”

This “promise” from Castor in 2005 involved related charges from Andrea Constand’s allegations. At the time, Castor decided not to levy those charges against Cosby and he issued a press release stating this decision. According to Variety, Cosby then gave deposition testimony in a civil lawsuit Constand had filed (in which she settled for $3.38 million), during which he acknowledged giving Quaaludes to other women. This deposition was later used by prosecutors in both of his criminal trials, the first of which resulted in a hung jury.

During the trial court hearing on the subject, it was found that Castor had not actually made a legally binding agreement. Castor argued that the press release counts as the written record of the agreement, however the press release does not include language about immunity from future prosecution.

Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, called the appeal a “pathetic last-ditch effort.”

“There is no merit to the DA’s request which centers on the unique facts of the Cosby case and has no impact on important federal questions of law,” Wyatt said in a statement. “This is a pathetic last-ditch effort that will not prevail. The Montgomery County’s DA’s fixation with Mr. Cosby is troubling to say the least.”