BLACK PRESS EXCLUSIVE – Part One: Cosby Remembers His Fight 4 Years After Prison Release

By Stacy M. Brown
Senior National Correspondent
Black Press USA

Six years ago this month, Bill Cosby was sentenced to prison. For some, it was the spectacle of a fallen idol. For others, it was the raw proof that this nation, still drunk on its own lies, can summon racism from the judge’s bench, let it seep into the prosecutor’s chair, and finally stain the jury box. 

What was lost, what was deliberately hidden, is that Cosby – blind, wealthy, eighty years old – could have walked out untouched if he had only bent his back, signed a paper, confessed to a sin he swore he did not commit. He refused. He chose prison over surrender, isolation over capitulation. That act alone, in a country that has always demanded Black men bow their heads, ought to have been recognized as a radical declaration of dignity.

Refusing The Easy Way Out

Cosby was about two years into his maximum 10-year sentence when on June 30, 2021, he was set free from State Correctional Institute-Phoenix in Collegeville, Pa.

Speaking recently on the Black Press show “Let It Be Known,” he recalled how prosecutors in his case had dangled freedom like meat before a starving man.

“My lawyer came to me and said, the district attorney is offering you to sign a paper saying you did it … and that you wouldn’t have to do prison time,” he said. “I told my lawyer to continue with the trial … I wasn’t signing any papers.” Even when caged, blind, and stripped of freedom, they offered him release if only he would renounce himself. “Sign the paper and go to these classes, and then we will let you go. My signature would be in a sealed envelope, and nobody could open it.” Again, he refused. He could have chosen the coward’s path. He could have lived out his days in comfort. Instead, he chose to carry innocence as a burden, fully believing he might never walk free again.

A Courtroom Steeped In Racism

In those courtrooms, the poison was naked. Black jurors were denied with cynical ease. A Black woman police officer was struck from service, not because she was unfit, but because she had once beaten back a false charge laid against her. At the retrial, when one Black juror was finally seated, a prosecutor spat, “You got your one.” Another juror declared Cosby guilty before hearing a single word and was still allowed to sit in judgment. And the judge – who should have been the steward of justice – was said to have whistled the theme from Kill Bill outside the jury room before the verdict in the retrial was returned.

The first trial ended in a mistrial, the jury grinding nearly 60 hours before breaking. They had leaned toward acquittal, but the judge forced them back. After the second trial ended in conviction, and when prosecutors argued he might flee because “he has a plane,” Cosby exploded once jurors left the room: “He doesn’t have a plane, you a-hole! I’m sick of him!” Never forget that prosecutors across jurisdictions passed on every other accusation. Only one case was carried forward – and even that was not about rape. The alleged victim admitted to bitterness when Valentine’s Day passed without a call. She later dialed Cosby to ask for tickets to his show for her parents. But facts were never the point. The performance of guilt was the only script the court was willing to stage.

With the Media, The Lie Had No Rival

Camille Cosby walked through those halls like a prophetess, entering a place fouled with racial contempt. She smiled, spoke softly to her husband, and left. That smile, quiet yet defiant, seemed to say: I know exactly what is happening here. And the media, hungry and complicit, huddled with the prosecutor’s mouthpiece to make certain every headline sang the same hymn of untruth. With no cameras in the room, the lie had no rival. The mention of Quaaludes covered newspapers and flooded television news, but the case was about Benadryl, 1 and a half tablets. Fiction and made-up lies were the norm at Cosby’s trials.

Mainstream media pushed the narrative that Cosby “slipped” drugs into an unsuspecting woman’s beverage. However, no evidence of such was presented at trial. Striking was the one person who seemed, by far, the most credible witness. A chef who worked for Cosby was present on the night of the alleged incident. That chef, a meticulous older man, testified that the visit by the accuser for which Cosby was on trial occurred on his last night in Cosby’s employ. Significantly, it proved that even if something nefarious took place, which Cosby vehemently denied, it happened well outside the statute of limitations. Among other things, the state Supreme Court agreed. The justices said the trial was illegal, should never have taken place, and the verdict was wrong. The justices ordered that prosecutors refrain from going after Cosby again.

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Part Two Next Week: Inside Prison Walls And Deserving A Parade