By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia
Andrew Wyatt, the longtime spokesman, and crisis manager for entertainer Bill Cosby had a simple word for Montgomery, Pennsylvania Prosecutor Kevin Steele. “Cheating never gets you far in life,” Wyatt insisted after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not review Cosby’s case despite the hail-Mary request from Steele.
“On behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Cosby and the Cosby family, we would like to offer our sincere gratitude to the justices of the United States Supreme Court for following rules of law and protecting the constitutional rights of all American citizens,” Wyatt remarked. “Mr. Cosby’s constitutional rights were a reprehensible bait by Kevin Steele, Judge Steven T. O’Neill, and their cohorts. This is truly a victory for Mr. Cosby. Still, it shows that cheating will never get you far in life, and the corruption that lies within the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office has been brought to the center stage of the world.”
The high court’s decision reaffirms that Cosby will remain free. It ends a saga that betrayed and gravely damaged the image and reputation of one of the most influential African American figures in television history.
After failing to secure a guilty verdict against Cosby in a 2017 trial, Steele vigorously prosecuted Cosby a year later. But from the beginning, seasoned legal professionals questioned Steele’s ethics in part because as he ran for Montgomery County District Attorney in 2015, much of his campaign centered on prosecuting Bill Cosby.
Many, including his opponent and former District Attorney Bruce Castor, called the theme unethical.
Steele did win the election and immediately became part of a formidable tandem with Judge O’Neil in securing a conviction against Cosby. After serving nearly three years of a three-to-10-year sentence, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction in June 2021. Steele appealed Cosby’s release to the U.S. Supreme Court nearly six months later, continuing his crusade against the “I-Spy” legend.
“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 at the time.
“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, Pennsylvania Supreme Court 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.”
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 and his team have argued against some who called the Pennsylvania high court’s decision 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?’ ‘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?” 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.”
