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Extracted Text (OCR)
Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 310-1 Filed 07/02/21 Page 19 of 80
complete intent to bind the Commonwealth that anything Cosby said in the
civil case could not be used against him, thereby forcing him to be deposed
and perhaps testify in a civil trial without him having the ability to “take the
5th” | decided to create the best possible environment for [Constand] to
prevail and be compensated. By signing my name as District Attorney and
issuing the attached, | was “signing off’ on the Commonwealth not being
able to use anything Cosby said in the civil case against him in a criminal
prosecution, because | was stating the Commonwealth will not bring a case
against Cosby for this incident based upon then-available evidence in order
to help [Constand] prevail in her civil action. Evidently, that strategy worked.
The attached, which was on letterhead and signed by me as District
Attorney, the concept approved by [Constand’s] lawyers was a “written
declaration” from the Attorney for the Commonwealth there would be no
prosecution based on anything Cosby said in the civil action. Naturally, if a
prosecution could be made out without using what Cosby said, or anything
derived from what Cosby said, | believed then and continue to believe that
a prosecution is not precluded.
Id., Exh. D-7.
Despite her predecessor’s concerns, D.A. Ferman and the investigators pressed
forward, reopening the criminal case against Cosby. Members of the prosecutorial team
traveled to Canada and met with Constand, asking her to cooperate with their efforts to
prosecute Cosby, even though she had specifically agreed not to do so as part of the civil
settlement. Investigators also began to identify, locate, and interview other women that
had claimed to have been assaulted by Cosby.
Nearly a decade after D.A. Castor’s public decision not to prosecute Cosby, the
Commonwealth charged Cosby with three counts of aggravated indecent assault’
stemming from the January 2004 incident with Constand in Cosby's Cheltenham
residence. On January 11, 2016, Cosby filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus‘?
ie By this time, Mr. Steele had replaced Judge Ferman as District Attorney. See 18
Pa.C.S. § 3125(a)(1), (a)(4), and (a)(5).
1s Cosby styled the petition as a “Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus and Motion to
Disqualify the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.” The trial court treated the
omnibus motion as three separate motions: (1) a motion to dismiss the charges based
upon the alleged non-prosecution agreement; (2) a motion to dismiss the charges based
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DOJ-OGR-00004831
Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00004831.jpg |
| File Size | 886.0 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.0% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,609 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 16:53:28.285140 |