US comedian Bill Cosby was on Wednesday freed from prison, in a blow to the #MeToo movement after a US court overturned his conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman 17 years ago.
The 83-year-old flashed the “V” sign outside his home near Philadelphia after leaving jail following a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that he had been denied a fair trial.
Cosby did not stop to answer reporters’ questions.
Photo: AP
Cosby, who shattered racial barriers with his Emmy-winning role on I Spy in the 1960s, was convicted in 2018 of assaulting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia mansion in 2004.
However, the judges wrote in a 79-page decision that a non-prosecution agreement between a former district attorney and Cosby over evidence he gave in a civil case meant that the entertainer should not have been charged.
“Cosby’s convictions and judgment of sentence are vacated, and he is discharged,” the judges wrote.
Cosby left State Correctional Institution Phoenix, a state prison 56km northwest of Philadelphia, just before 2:30pm, a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokesperson said.
His conviction was the first guilty verdict for sexual assault against a celebrity since the advent of the global #MeToo movement.
Accusers of Cosby and supporters of the movement expressed anger at his release.
Lawyer Lisa Bloom said she and the three Cosby accusers that she represents were “disgusted that he is a free man today.”
Cosby served more than two years of a three-to-10-year sentence for aggravated indecent assault and has always maintained his innocence.
Although more than 60 women charged that they had been victims of sexual assault by Cosby, he was tried criminally only for Constand’s assault, as the statute of limitations had expired in the other cases.
Cosby — who also starred as a dad and doctor on the hit TV series The Cosby Show in the 1980s — has said that the encounter with Constand, who was then a Temple University employee, was consensual.
He filed his second appeal against his conviction in August last year.
The attorneys argued that it was “fundamentally unfair” that deposition testimony Cosby gave in a civil case regarding his use of sedative drugs and his sexual behaviors in the 1970s was heard in court.
Cosby had admitted in the deposition for his civil case that he gave Quaaludes — a now-banned party drug — to women with the aim of having sex with them.
They argued that Cosby believed the testimony was immune from prosecution when he gave it, but the acknowledgment had formed a key part of his trial.
The judges agreed that the non-prosecution agreement meant he should not have been charged.
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