So yeah, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court let Bill Cosby out of jail. I’m not going to discuss the legal issues because they don’t matter to me—it’s not as if the justices are going to change their minds.
What struck me was the idea that Mr. Philly-Delphia, the dreadful Bruce Castor, would make a deal with a forking rapist to not prosecute him for rape. I mean here’s someone who was credibly accused of rape by 60 women, and at least 1 of the attorneys involved (who knows if it was a deal that also involved Cosby’s attorneys, too) decided to protect…the rapist.
I should be used to the pervasiveness of rape culture in US society. But I’m not. Cosby being let out of jail is a gut punch. Cosby being let out of jail because a pathetic human like Castor deliberately protected him is enraging.
And here’s another upsetting thing: there are people who think Cosby’s freeing is funny. When the release was posted to the online community I frequent, one male poster responded by repeatedly posting gifs from The Cosby Show of Cosby and cast dancing in celebration. The vast majority of the nearly all male membership there has been silently approving of his celebration of rape culture.
And then the judge in the Britney Spears case refused her request to remove her father from her conservatorship. It wasn’t a great day for women’s rights in America.
Because the entire culture is abusive.
Savannah Guthrie had one of the prosecutors on to chat with her on the Today Show. First off, I enjoyed that fact that both women used accurate legal terms of art, which made following their conversation so much easier instead of getting mentally side-tracked.
Anyway, the prosecutor (didn’t catch her name) said that the agreement between Castor and Cosby that Cosby wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted for anything he said in the civil suit was never written down and never approved by a judge. Now, the fact that Cosby sat for a deposition in the civil case and confessed under oath to his crimes could be used as circumstantial support for the existence of the informal agreement. But there are plenty of guys sitting in the jug today because a cop or a prosecuting attorney told him to just confess and he’d be granted immunity for ratting out his accomplice.