Ghislaine Maxwell should be next, says lawyer after Cosby’s release

Bill Cosby’s overturned conviction horrifies his accusers and prompts grim warning from leaders of #MeToo.

As a court overturned his conviction, Bill Cosby’s accusers were horrified, leaders of the #MeToo movement warned that it would make it harder for victims of sexual abuse to get justice, and a lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell declared that she too should be freed.

Meanwhile the man himself, once so popular an entertainer that he was known as America’s dad, was back in his mansion in Philadelphia, insisting he was innocent and comparing his plight to other miscarriages of justice he had encountered during his three years in prison. One of his lawyers, Jennifer Bonjean, showed the words “not guilty” tattooed on her arm as they posed for the cameras at the end of his drive.

Scores of women have accused him of sexual assault and a jury convicted him in 2018 of drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004, having been shown depositions Cosby had given acknowledging that he had given drugs to women he wanted to have sex with.

He was freed on Wednesday after Pennsylvania’s supreme court ruled that a non-prosecution agreement he had struck with a county district attorney in 2005 meant that a later prosecutor could not bring charges against him.

Bill Cosby flashes a "V" sign as he is welcomed outside his home after Pennsylvania's highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction and ordered him released from prison immediately. Picture: Reuters

He had served three years of a ten-year sentence. The court ruled that this agreement convinced Cosby to testify under oath in a civil case brought by Constand without invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

David Markus, a lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, said the decision undermined the sex trafficking and abuse case against his client, saying she too had relied on a non-prosecution agreement struck by Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 when she agreed to sit for two depositions in a civil suit. Unlike Cosby’s verbal agreement, this one was written down, he said.

In his depositions Cosby appeared to acknowledge what many accusers were alleging. “Was it in your mind that you were going to use these Quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” Dolores Troiani, Constand’s lawyer, asked him, referring to a sedative drug that is now banned. “Yes,” he replied. He said he had given them to a 19-year-old backstage after a show in Las Vegas. “We then have sex,” he said.

In a statement, Constand, 48, and her lawyers said the decision “may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant”.

Dylan Farrow, who accuses Woody Allen of sexually abusing her as a child, allegations he denies, lamented that “sixty brave women” had come forward only to see Cosby’s conviction overturned on a technicality.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer representing accusers in both cases, said the decision in Pennsylvania “cannot legally be cited in the federal criminal case against Ms Maxwell”.

She added that “federal prosecutors have concluded that any such agreement with Ms Maxwell does not prevent them from prosecuting her”.

The Times