By Dorothy J. Gentry
Contributing Writer
Credit: NNPA
For decades he was known as “America’s Dad.”
Then he became one of the first faces convicted during the #MeToo movement where women began using their voices to identify and name men who they say subjected them to unwanted sexual advances and sexual harassment in the workplace and more.
He was sent to prison following his 2018 conviction for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand who testified that Cosby assaulted her at his Pennsylvania home in 2004 after she came to him for career advice.
On Wednesday he became a free man. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and ordered his release from prison after finding that he was denied protection against self-incrimination.
Per reports, the court said that a prosecutor’s decision not to charge Cosby, 83, opened the door for him to speak freely in a lawsuit against him and that testimony was key in his conviction years later by another prosecutor.
The now 83-year-old Cosby was convicted on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004 and was serving a three- to 10-year sentence. He has served nearly three years of the sentence.
Cosby, the state Supreme Court said, cannot be retried on the same charges.
He was released from the SCI Phoenix detention center about 35 miles northeast of Philadelphia.
Stay tuned to Texas Metro News for more on this developing story.
