Regarding the Bill Cosby trial.
And his conviction last week.
Newspaper accounts noted that the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, asked that Mr. Cosby’s $1 million bail be revoked, suggesting he had been convicted of a serious crime, owned a plane, and could flee.
This prompted an angry outburst from Mr. Cosby, who shouted, “He doesn’t have a plane, you asshole.”
Judge Steven T. O’Neill said he did not view Mr. Cosby as a flight risk and said that Cosby could be released on bail but that he would have to remain in his nearby home. The judge did not set a date for sentencing.
Cosby was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, all felonies, each punishable by up to 10 years in state prison. Cosby, the former star of the 1980’s television program “The Cosby Show,” lives in an expensive compound outside Philadelphia. He is appealing the verdict, which could potentially delay his imprisonment. Cosby is 80 years old and is legally blind.
*****************************************************
The prosecutor’s remark about the possibility of Cosby fleeing prior to sentencing, possibly in a plane, remined me of comments of mine in a recent post on this site:
“the punishment of Anthony Weiner”
I wrote as follows:
Trials are a game. Like kids playing tug of war, Old Maid, or Monopoly. Or sports contests. The two sides — prosecution and defense — only want to WIN. (And, to run up the score, if they can. Just as a football team doesn’t want to win by 3 points if they can manage to win by 30 points, prosecutors argue for as long a sentence as they can manage to see imposed, no matter the justness of it.) Perhaps — probably — to bolster their resumes. In the process, what’s fair and what the explanation for misdeeds might be — and many other considerations that ought to be taken into account in resolving thorny questions of motivation, guilt, responsibility, accountability, and so on — get brushed aside.
The truth and what’s fair are irrelevant. Compassion for the individual on trial is considered irrelevant, not to the purpose. …
*****************************************************
The prosecutor knows, everyone knows, that Cosby is not going to flee. He is a celebrity known to all — concealment and absconding would be impossible. He is 80 years old and legally blind.
So, what is the point of the prosecutor’s request, and of his making the remark?
Lawyers (a prosecutor has a law degree) are supposedly educated persons with an undergraduate degree and a JD. Which means they are capable of making a distinction between what is reasonable to claim and what is patently absurd. So that, when the prosecutor makes such a claim, it is not a case of ignorance or incapacity. It is rather a matter of intentional heedlessness of what is pertinent and relevant; and of wanton cruelty.
It is simple cruelty, the desire to inflict maximum hardship upon the defendant. A sadistic desire to do so. To find any and all possible means, including the littlest, to inflict an onerous burden upon — as many afflictions and indignities, of a cruel, petty, and malicious nature, entirely uncalled for and unneeded — to humiliate and degrade, the defendant. The same things are done continually in prisons.
This little detail of the trial shows what our criminal “justice” system is really about. Not justice or fairness. Not restitution or rehabilitation. Unquestionably not. It is about winning at all costs and seeing convicted persons suffer as much pain as can possibly be inflicted.
This is not justice. It is institutionalized sadism. It works in ways large and small. From the courts to the prison system.
— Roger W. Smith
April 29, 2018