Bill Cosby’s legal team just demonstrated the importance of not counting chickens before they hatch. We told you that his legal team was supposed to file paperwork to get him released over coronavirus concerns. But after Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf ordered the state’s Department of Corrections to establish a program to move some prisoners to either to community corrections facilities or their homes, they figured he’d be able to get out that way…and didn’t file the paperwork.
While Cosby’s rep, Andrew Wyatt, was confident that the 82-year-old’s blindness, age, and underlying conditions would make him a perfect candidate to get out of jail, a representative for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections didn’t think so. “Based on the criteria exempting sex offenders and knowing his highly publicized case, he would not qualify,” the official noted on Friday. According to the governor’s office, the program only applies to “state prison inmates who have been identified as being nonviolent and who otherwise would be eligible for release within the next nine months or who are considered at high risk for complications of coronavirus and are within 12 months of their release.”
Cosby, who’s currently serving three to 10 years on a sexual assault conviction from 2018, released a statement on his IG over the weekend saying that he wouldn’t survive COVID-19 with his underlying medical issues. “We are asking Governor Wolf to amend his executive order and grant Mr. Cosby Compassionate Relief based on his current medical status,” he says in the caption. “Mr. Cosby was not given a life sentence nor a death sentence, so we are requesting that Gov. Wolf use his gubernatorial powers to show compassion to another human being, Bill Cosby.”
