Bill Cosby celebrates 84th birthday as free man day after DA vehemently defends criminal prosecution

Bill Cosby celebrated his 84th birthday as a free man Monday — a day after Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele doubled down on his position that the comedian belongs back in Pennsylvania prison.

“On my Birthday — I wholeheartedly thank you for your support, thank you for fighting for my freedom and thank you for staying grounded and on the case,” Cosby said in a statement to supporters.

In his own statement Sunday, Steele vehemently defended his decision to prosecute Cosby for his alleged 2004 sexual assault of former Temple University staffer Andrea Constand.

A jury convicted Cosby of aggravated indecent assault in 2018, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction two weeks ago, saying the actor’s due process rights were violated because Steele’s predecessor declined to bring charges under a supposed scheme to secure Cosby’s deposition testimony for Constand’s civil lawsuit.

Cosby was released from prison within hours of the June 30 ruling.

Steele said he decided to weigh in again Sunday to address “a tremendous amount of misinformation about what actually took place in this criminal prosecution.”

Earlier in the weekend, WHTM-TV aired an interview with Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Max Baer in which the judge said the court didn’t exonerate Cosby, rather it found that DA Steele “broke the rules” by ignoring an “immunity” deal.

“We certainly didn’t find Bill Cosby not guilty or find him innocent. What we found was what the state did was inappropriate,” Chief Justice Baer said.

“To be very clear, prosecutors in this case did not believe there was an agreement not to prosecute or immunity for the defendant at the time we moved forward on the case, and we do not believe it now,” Steele shot back Sunday night, mentioning Baer by name.

“If we had believed there was an agreement or immunity, we would not have moved forward in our attempt to bring Cosby to justice,” he said.

Steele said his predecessor, former DA Bruce Castor, declined prosecution back in 2005 with a caveat in his own press release that read, “District Attorney Castor cautions all parties to this matter that he will reconsider this decision should the need arise.”

Steele said no immunity agreement was ever “put on the record before or during the contentious civil deposition of Cosby” that was later used against him at the criminal trial.

He said the “alleged agreement” only surfaced years later through an email Castor sent to the DA’s office that allegedly was “blind copied to (Cosby’s) defense counsel” amid a re-investigation of the case.

According to Steele, an “extensive investigation” by his office “found no credible evidence that Castor had given Cosby immunity.”

Steele said he was still considering his options Sunday.

“As we examine if any further review is available to us in this case, know that those working in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office will continue to follow the evidence wherever and to whomever it leads,” he wrote. “We will continue to follow the law as we did in this case.”

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