Bill Cosby’s Wife: ‘This Is Mob Justice, Not Real Justice’
A week after her husband was found guilty of sexual assault in a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, court, Camille Cosby posted to Facebook a lengthy rebuke of the media and the judicial system that prosecuted the disgraced comedian. “Bill Cosby was labelled as guilty because the media and accusers said so… period,” she wrote in a post on Thursday. “And the media ensured the dissemination of that propaganda by establishing barricades preventing the dissemination of the truth in violation of the protections of the First Amendment. Are the media now the people’s judges and juries?”
“This is mob justice, not real justice,” she added. “This tragedy must be undone not just for Bill Cosby, but for the country.”
She went on to compare her husband to Emmett Till, the black teenager who was lynched in 1955 after a white woman falsely claimed he was flirting with her. “Since when are all accusers truthful?” she wrote. “History disproves that…for example, Emmett Till’s accuser immediately comes to mind. In 1955, she testified before a jury of white men in a Mississippi courtroom that a 14-year-old African American boy had sexually assaulted her, only to later admit several decades later in 2008 that her testimony was false.”
Official Statement From Camille O. Cosby
“We the people” are the first three words of our nation’s Constitution, but who were those people in 1787? Dr. Howard Zinn, the renowned, honest historian, states in his… https://t.co/ksTOLQ2aKN
— Bill Cosby (@BillCosby) May 3, 2018
The day after the verdict was handed down, Cosby publicist Ebonee Benson made a similar comparison during an appearance on Good Morning America. “Since when are all people honest?” she said. “And since when are all women honest? We can take a look at Emmett Till, for example. Since when are all people honest?”
The comparisons to Till are problematic for a number of reasons, not least among them the fact that not one, but dozens of women – over 50, in fact – have come forward against Cosby with similar accusations of sexual assault. In addition to the case that concluded last Thursday, several other women have filed lawsuits against Cosby.
After equating her husband’s conviction to a race-based murder, Camille Cosby called for a criminal investigation into the Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and his “cohorts.”
“This is a homogeneous group of exploitive and corrupt people, whose primary purpose is to advance themselves professionally and economically at the expense of Mr. Cosby’s life,” she wrote. “If they can do this to Mr. Cosby, they can do so to anyone.”
Cosby was found guilty of three felonies relating to the drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand, which occurred 14 years ago at Cosby’s Pennsylvania home. During the time of the assault, Constand was an employee at Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater. After the verdict was delivered, the university stripped Cosby of the honorary doctorate it awarded the comedian in 1991. Each of the three felonies for which Cosby was convicted is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A sentencing date has yet to be set.