Originally published at: Fat Albert Gets Out of Jail, Free! | Boing Boing
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I haven’t talked to her about it, but I’m sure my mother is no doubt very pleased with this outcome. She’s been long convinced that there’s been a conspiracy against Bill Cosby stemming back at least to his interest in buying NBC. One outcome of his interest was the murder of his son. So the accusations and “unfair” conviction were the continuation of a plot against him. It’s hard to watch your heroes fall.
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Not as hard as watching your rapist walk free or ostensibly decent people defending him despite his clear guilt. 
Also a good example of why there should never be any statute of limitations on culpability for rape.
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I agree with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling throwing out his conviction. Before you blast me, perhaps you should read why the Court made that decision.
Yea, he joins another famous celebrity who’s guilty and walking free.
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This is what prosecutorial misconduct gets you.
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Do you agree with the series of events, including the unwritten no-prosecution deal that, which led to that decision?
People defending the decision are super-duper focused on the decision and not why it was possible, namely a corrupt prosecutor and a wealthy defendant. So much so that they pop up early in a discussion about a comic that’s about those events and not about the decision itself.
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It gets easier after the first few.
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Yeah, yeah, we get it. The court made the only decision they could to uphold civil rights. When everyone is afforded the opportunity to throw out a verdict gained through prosecutorial misconduct, we’ll cheer for that. No sooner.
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Cosby may be guilty, but prosecutors have to abide by the laws. The problem isn’t that Cosby got out, but that prosecutors can get away with anything against people who can’t afford good lawyer, and that police and prosecutors often care more about an easy conviction than justice.
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No one in this thread has yet said otherwise, nor is the comic even about that.
The problem is both. It’s a problem that a corrupt prosecutor was able to let a clearly guilty serial rapist off the hook. And it’s a problem that quality, duration and therefore outcome of defense, as well as the conditions of punishment, depend largely on the wealth of the defendant, a point the comic makes abundantly clear.
To suggest it’s an either/or is a false dichotomy. And for the umpteenth time, almost no one is arguing that the courts shouldn’t be obliged to follow the law. We’re arguing that prosecutorial discretion is often abused as it was in this case and that other aspects of the law, such as the statute of limitations on the culpability for rape that made it impossible to prosecute Cosby for most of the rapes he committed, is wrong and should be changed.
One corrupt incompetent DA made a backroom deal with a serial rapist over a decade ago and now he’s walking free. That’s a broken system.
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I agree. I’m just trying to better understand my mother’s mindset in her absolute denial of what appears to be a clear reality. Cosby landed on a list of topics to avoid discussing at family cookouts if I’m looking to have a remotely good time.
Tell me about it. I’ve given up on holding famous people in any high regard and honestly believe we should destroy the concept of “celebrity.”
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Hero worship is toxic. It replaces real flawed human beings with idols.
Sympathies with regards to your family situation. That’s rough.
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We all understand why the court made this decision. We also all* understand that the entire situation represents a larger failure of the American justice system. The combination of an incompetent and/or corrupt prosecutor (Bruce Castor) and systemic inequity that favours wealthy defendants has allowed a serial rapist to go free. That’s not justice.
[* well, most of us. Some have that claimed this reaction is mainly about not liking Cosby for reasons other than his sexual assaults]
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Cosby spendt almost three years in prison. I doubt these celebrities would be so keen on rape if that was seen as the “good” outcome when the lawyers did their best and had the help of a corrupt prosecutor.
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It is a social construct that will never go away. It will only get worse with the ability of more people gaining a limited amount of it.
Unfortunately, we make excuses for people we like. It doesn’t have to be famous people, people do it for friends and family members all the time.
No one who rapes someone is thinking about possible prison time while they are committing the act. Same with other things like murder.
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People tend to forget that their “Heros” are also people. And people tend to be pretty shitty. Being talented in one area does not make them talented in other areas. It does not make their opinions somehow more worthy then the rest of us, despite the the soapbox their celebrity brings. It does not make them somehow “good people”. On the contrary, being a celebrity just gives them more opportunity to be crappy, while also giving them the clout and status to have their crappy behavior hidden or swept under the rug. Even the celebs who appear to be “good people” can, and do, sometimes turn out to have a horrible hidden side.
Bill Cosby really was a very funny fellow. And a serial rapist. The same guy who co-starred in The Electric Company with Morgan Freeman, and was famous for his outreach for kids education, was also drugging and raping women left and right.
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We should absolutely see it as a flaw in ourselves when we idealize other people. It’s inevitable that we do it, but we should see it as a weakness/vulnerability because it is one-- and an easy one to exploit at that.
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Some acts like that are made in the heat of the moment without thought of the consequences, others are more calculated. For a serial rapist like Cosby I think it was more that he was convinced he would get away with it, maybe even that he didn’t do anything wroing, that it was just how things were supposed to work. Reading about how some other celebrity spent years in prison for doing the same thing is a deterrent.
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Are you so hardened that you think three years in prison is something you just shrug off?
