This and any future case against Cosby has already been placed in jeopardy by the careless and blatant politics of a media-maven politician running for higher office in Pennsylvania’s politically polluted court system.
Three recent criminal cases in Pennsylvania have raised to national prominence the serious problem of political influence in the state’s court system.
The cases against Penn State administrators, state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, and now comedian Bill Cosby have all raised serious questions about the role of politics and political motivations in criminal prosecutions in Pennsylvania.
Media mavens: Montco DA Kevin Steele and Bill Cosby
Politics have not only hurt each of these individual cases.
They’ve put the spotlight on the growing cancer of political corruption in the state court system, and raised concerns about the underlying soundness and fairness of criminal prosecutions in Pennsylvania.
The criminal prosecution of the Penn State administrators — Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz and Tim Curley — has been tied up in legal wrangling and appeals since 2012.
The Spanier, Schultz and Curley case has been sidetracked for more than three years by the troubling question of whether a politically connected lawyer (and a former Supreme Court justice, no less), Cynthia Baldwin, improperly sold the defendants — her clients — down the river to assist in their prosecution.
The case against the three Penn State administrators is itself tied to the infamous Jerry Sandusky pedophile case. Questions have lingered about whether Sandusky himself was politically protected for years so that a former state attorney general could run for governor.
A state appeals court last week finally awoke from its politics-induced coma long enough to throw out the charges against the three administrators related to attorney Baldwin.
From its inception, the pending criminal case against current Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has been tainted by the perception of political skullduggery in the state and Montgomery County court systems.
AG Kane has had her law license suspended by a politically compromised state Supreme Court, without benefit of a single fair or open hearing.
And now the politicians in the legislature and the state Supreme Court are working overtime to politically remove her from office and replace her with politically favored insiders.
This same politically tainted Montgomery County court system that has taken upon itself the role of prosecuting the state attorney general has now squared off against wealthy comedian Bill Cosby.
This week Cosby and his legal team trooped to the Montgomery County courthouse to ask that charges against him be dropped because of a previous deal with a former DA to not bring charges.
With Cosby, the legal issue may be whether a deal with the previous DA is binding.
But the more troubling policy issue for Pennsylvanians is that the new Montgomery County DA, Kevin Steele, made a political promise to prosecute Cosby while campaigning for office, to win votes. Steele ran a TV commercial criticizing his opponent, former DA Bruce Castor, for not prosecuting Cosby in 2005.
Candidate Steele suggested he’d help Cosby’s alleged victims, but he also helped himself, politically, by cashing in on Cosby’s notoriety.
DA Steele made a “political football” of Cosby during his campaign, Cosby’s lawyers this week told the Montgomery County judge — and the country, on cable news. And this is only getting started.
Cosby’s case, whether the underlying allegations are found to have have merit or not, has everything to do with politics. DA Steele’s supporters are suggesting former DA Castor himself refused to prosecute Cosby for political reasons. So there’s politics all around, and very little justice, or trustworthy practice of law.
This Wednesday the Montgomery County judge ruled Cosby should stand trial, despite the 2005 promise of immunity. Cosby’s well-heeled defense team quickly promised to appeal the ruling. Anyone who’s been following the Spanier, Schultz and Curley odyssey through Pennsylvania courts knows what that likely means.
In the end, Montgomery County District Attorney Steele’s campaign promises may only serve to protect Bill Cosby.
It goes without saying: even if Cosby’s longstanding behavior or misbehavior merits criminal punishment, this and any future case against him has already been placed in jeopardy by the careless and blatant politics of a media-maven politician running for higher office in Pennsylvania’s politically polluted court system.
The Cosby case shows us we’re no longer only endangering our own citizens and court cases in Pennsylvania, but others, all around the United States.
This political interference in court cases, which has become commonplace in Pennsylvania, is not only unseemly and wrong, but inherently unfair, and dangerous.
In other countries, where the prosecution of individuals rests on the outcome of an election, the guns come out, and the shooting starts.
Worse, we now have two or three generations of Pennsylvanians who have grown up with blatant politics in our court system, and who know nothing else.
Criminal cases have improperly become a political blood sport here, often cheered on by a complicit and shallow news media.
Those of us old enough to have lived through President Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre still remember a time when principled officials would rather resign in defense of law and justice than submit to political interference.
“The most important thing was that the rule of law should prevail; the president must comply with the law. Ultimately, all (the people’s) liberties were at stake,” warned Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.
That’s the same spirit we need to see rekindled, and nurtured, today in Pennsylvania.
In AG Kane’s case, we see the sick spectacle of the state attorney general having to wait for an election before she can appeal her case to a politicized state Supreme Court.
At the same time, politically elected members of the Supreme Court are still protecting themselves and their cronies, adding to the perception that they are punishing Kane for the discovery of their pornographic email collection.
From the top to the bottom, we see nothing but raw politics in a degraded and corrupt Pennsylvania court system.
In the bigger picture, all concerned Pennsylvanians must now think seriously about long-overdue reforms to appoint our judges and take our courts, as much as humanly possible, beyond the realm of politics.
We should be asking the difficult but necessary questions on how we get there.
We simply must get politics out of our courts, or it will be our death.
But we can’t stop there.
In the case of all defendants before our courts — AG Kane, the Penn State administrators, and now even comedian Bill Cosby — we should begin to ask for a resolution based not on what feels good politically, nor what political scores can be settled — but what is fair and just?
How can we build and preserve a court system that, as much as humanly possible, arrives at the truth, equally, for all citizens?
In the old days, it was called “Justice.”
For the reasons enumerated above, an elected judiciary may be the worst idea in American politics — and that’s not a distinction that’s easy to come by.
EDITOR: Perhaps the only thing worse would be an appointed judiciary!
More seriously, the problem today may be the entire Pennsylvania network of legislature, executive and judiciary has been allowed to sink to such depths that that it is hard to bring about any reform. Everything has gotten tainted.
Perhaps the best that can be said of Attorney General Kathleen Kane is that she came from ‘left field’ and was not a part of it.
I, personally, agonize over thoughts that the justice system has already too far gone. I am thankful that using the political agenda didn’t help Cosby. As a victim, targeted, mirrored, and abused by a disordered individual, I know how power and the use of a smear campaign can be used to keep victims quiet. The reception these “alleged” victims are receiving by much of the public, absolutely makes me understand why they didn’t come forward back then.
Power corrupts, and allows the offenders to go unpunished. Lack of oversight on the parts of mighty judges allows them to rule on hapless victims.
Families are being destroyed in the U.S. for the sake of the mighty court’s funding related government agencies. It’s as if, in order for the wrongs to righted, the U.S. justice system will have to implode on itself, and even the government, without the funding received by the “crooks.”
We certainly do need change, but it will be at great cost to our nation.
Judge Dougherty made a statement on the day he was sworn into the supreme court about justice that sounded like he was saying “Just-us”…
Good luck! This state is so corrupt that they send Penndot managers to school to learn about ethics. They teach them not to laugh when they hear the word.
Got the best politicians money can buy.
Yep. Good luck with thus. The good Ole boys at it again.
The hell with Bill Cosby. Never liked his dumb Show. As a Comedian he didn’t swear enough!!
1 or 2 accusers maybe made up for some fame or monetary gain.. over 30 spanning decades.. no way he is innocent.
I’m not saying he’s innocent. I’m saying it’s going to be difficult to find him guilty. There’s a difference.
Most states that appoint their judges use a panel of bureacats..and it works better simply because these would be judges aren’t pandering for votes, campaign fees or approval from politicos.
If they are appointed the politicians are going to appoint them so that is not the answer.
The fact that this so-called DA made a political promise to go after Bill Cosby simply voids this as a case because he used this as a ploy to gather votes for his political campaign and with that being said it should be thrown out of court…
They more than likely will use the DA’s political agenda against him by saying he used the Cosby’s allegations as a political ploy to jump start his career as a district attorney in hopes to make him famous for putting Bill Cosby behind bars, They also will use the fact that the women contacted civil lawyers before she went to prosecutors by saying her motives were clearly base on money to alleged she had sex with cosby to set him up
Bill,
Great read. This passage caught my attention…
“Questions have lingered about whether Sandusky himself was politically protected for years so that a former state attorney general could run for governor.”
Sandusky was protected for many, many years. It is highly probable that someone in Harrisburg pulled strings to make the “lead pipe lock” case of Sandusky molesting kids in 1998 go away.
A similar thing happened to another serial molester in Centre County in 2005, however, it was the NEW DA that made the case go away.
That DA, Mike Madeira, kicked the Sandusky case up to Corbett.
BTW, who was AG in 2005, when Ray Gricar disappeared? Yes, Tom Corbett.