and harris will begin america reports
with continuing coverage of the breaking
news and bill
cosby to get out of prison today in a
stunning ruling that no one saw coming
the pennsylvania state supreme court
just overturning
his rape conviction good afternoon and
welcome to america reports i'm john
roberts good to see you again today
thanks for having me back i'm shaina
bremen today for sandra smith now bill
cosby has served more than two
years of a three to ten year sentence at
a state prison near philadelphia now
he's vowed that he would
serve all 10 years rather than ever
admit he was guilty in this 2004
encounter
with accuser andrea constand cosby now
83 years old and very well could have
spent the rest of his life
behind bars until this bombshell today
trace gallagher is live in new york and
he's got the breaking details on this
trace nobody saw this coming nobody saw
this coming in fact we're just now kind
of sifting through this john this
opinion right here it's 78 pages and
shannon can probably help me kind of
sift through this here because the
conclusion on on page 77 kind of goes
into the fact that the judge
who initially said that he was only
going to allow one
witness at cosby's original trial and
then went on to allow
five of the accusers from back in the
1980s to speak at his trial
and the judge felt that that testimony
kind of tainted
the trial and that was the basis for the
release and as shannon alluded to
earlier
what they were saying and bill cosby
said look i am not going to admit
remorse i would rather serve the entire
10-year sentence
than admit remorse this of course
dealing with the
allegations charges andrea constand
brought against him
and cosby said he would serve that time
the sentence was three to ten years
and of course he has served a little
over two years but in the opinion
the judges the justices kind of go into
the fact that
these uh witness testimony the five
witness testimony
they actually didn't really pertain as
much to the facts of the case
they were more of personal attacks and
that he believes
or they believe kind of tainted the
outcome of this
and that's where we stand right now now
we're being told
by cosby spokespeople that they are on
their way to the prison right now
and they will hold a news cover we don't
know the timing of that
we don't know exactly when bill cosby
will actually walk out
that might take a few hours for them to
process but we are being told
there will be a news conference we are
trying to get some legal analysis on
this
shannon of course can offer that and
it's important to note
that you know the people who uh the
victims
in this case are also coming out they in
many cases
are furious that cosby is being released
but for now it appears that bill cosby
will
walk out of a prison in the next couple
of hours
and he or his spokespeople will go
before the cameras
when that happens john and janet you
know trace there was a couple of things
that the supreme court considered there
was this idea that his retrial was
tainted
by the judge allowing multiple other
victims to come forward but then there
was something
also about cosby saying he had an
agreement with another prosecutor never
to be charged
yeah i mean the decision not to charge
this is the whole thing and i'm reading
this this is commonwealth right versus d
pascual the decision to charge or not to
charge a defendant can be conditioned
modified
or revoked at the discretion of the
prosecutor
it goes on to say however the discretion
vested in our commonwealth's prosecutors
does not mean that its exercise is free
of the constraints of due process
when an unconditional charging decision
is made publicly
and with the intent to induce action and
reliance by the defendant
and when the defendant does so to his
detriment and in some instances upon
the advice of counsel denying the
defendant
of benefit of that decision is an
affront to the fundamental
fairness particularly when it results in
a criminal prosecution
that was foregone for more than a decade
what they're saying is these allegations
were made
in the 80s many of them the early 90s
and the judges saying look it's
it's a fairness the justice is saying
it's a fairness issue here
and they believe in this case the
fairness is that bill cosby should be
released from prison john well it's a
stunner thank you for handling the
breaking news trace in addition to your
other duties today