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CNN has revealed a private email from a former D.A.
Is the Cosby case about to be derailed? 
By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun First posted: Saturday, January 16, 2016 01:18 PM EST | Updated: Saturday, January 16, 2016 02:51 PM EST 
So just like that the lone sexual assault charge against Bill Cosby is in jeopardy over an email? Cosby’s defence team is certainly pushing the notion. But not so fast, says the district attorney who brought the charges from a 2004 complaint by Toronto’s Andrea Constand. Still, the headline on the top of CNN’s web page breaking late Friday night certainly grabbed the eye: “CNN Exclusive: Email may derail case against Bill Cosby.” The story describes how former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania District Attorney Bruce Castor “claims he agreed more than a decade ago that his office wouldn’t use a civil deposition given by Bill Cosby in any criminal matters — a revelation that could call into question the viability of the criminal case against the comedian.” More than 50 women have made claims Cosby, 78, drugged and assaulted them. It seems Castor, who lost last year’s election to Kevin Steele, wrote in an e-mail to their boss Risa Vetri Ferman saying he had made an agreement to clear the path for Constand’s civil case to be settled but collapsing any desire for a criminal case. “I can see no possibility that Cosby’s deposition could be used in a state criminal case, because I would have to testify as to what happened, and the deposition would be subject to suppression,” CNN reported from the Castor email. “I cannot believe any state court judge would allow that deposition into evidence ... knowing this, unless you can make out a case without that deposition and without anything the deposition led you to, I think Cosby would have an action against the County and maybe even against you personally.” Based on this agreement Cosby’s lawyers are planning to file a motion to dismiss the charges Feb. 2. But while a judge will ultimately have to decide on this, Steele told me last night he will be fighting this attempt to avoid prosecution on a technicality. “We will file a response to their motion,” he promised. That is going to be one interesting day because while Castor claims to have made a verbal agreement to not prosecute Cosby, Steele will argue that certainly is not something that should tie the hands of the office of the DA. It does seem odd that a prosecutor is able to collapse a criminal case and have any interest or involvement in a civil one. Either way Steele says any protocols to allow that were not in play in this case. “For immunity, a judge must sign off on a petition from a prosecutor.” he told me. “No such order exists in this case.” In fact he says in Castor’s own release in 2005 he wrote he would “reconsider this decision should the need arise.” Steele says he decided to re-open the case based on unsealed testimony by a judge from the civil case in which Cosby himself admitted he gave “blue” pills to Constand that she says rendered her in an altered state of consciousness in which she says she was sexually violated. |