Bill Cosby is out of prison. As been stated before, this doesn’t mean he’s entirely off the hook—whether that means in the court of public opinion or in the court of law.
As The Root reported in June, the 84-year-old comedian-actor’s sexual assault conviction was overturned after serving two years in prison due to a prosecutorial technicality—basically, he was released because “justices took issue with the way the prosecution was handled and because an agreement with a previous prosecutor in a civil case should have prevented him from being criminally charged.”
However, Cosby still has a civil lawsuit over his head. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Judy Huth filed a civil lawsuit against Cosby, alleging that he sexually assaulted her at a Playboy Mansion in 1974. Huth was 15 years old at the time of the alleged assault.
Per his legal team’s recent request to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, Cosby would like to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights during the deposition.
Here’s more case deets from THR:
The Huth case, originally filed in 2014, has been on hold for years. At one point, Cosby was ordered to sit for a deposition, and he did, but refused to answer questions. The litigation then took a back seat to Cosby’s criminal problems. Now that Cosby’s conviction for assaulting Andrea Constand has been overturned by the Pennsylvania’s highest court because of an old non-prosecution agreement in that jurisdiction, Cosby is free, at least in theory, to testify in civil cases. (Recall, for example, how O.J. Simpson had to take the witness stand in a wrongful death suit he eventually lost after he beat a criminal case for the murders of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman.)
“Defendant does not agree that merely because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated Defendant’s criminal conviction for a single offense, allegedly arising from an incident that occurred in 2004, Defendant no longer enjoys a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent,” a public status conference report read. “This is particularly so where numerous states have no criminal statutes of limitations for sex crimes. It is well-settled that the Fifth Amendment protects both the innocent and the guilty. Having already been forced to face a malicious criminal prosecution that resulted in an unlawful three-year incarceration, Defendant is not confident that such a risk does not still exist in this jurisdiction and others.”
In other news, Cosby’s representatives recently announced his hopeful return to stand-up comedy touring, which is…a choice.