Bill Cosby and George Floyd both deserved due process

Also: why modern left-liberalism isn't concerned with consistent principles, which helps explain why the movement's values seem so strange to someone like your humble narrator.

Finally, a terrible wrong is being righted. A miscarriage of justice is corrected. Bill Cosby is free at last.

Bill Cosby is also a rapist. The 83-year-old comedian almost certainly drugged and raped many women and was convicted for those crimes in a court of law.

Wen Phylicia Rashad tweeted that celebratory tweet—FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!—she wasn’t wrong. But justice is messy, and many people are rightfully upset by Cosby walking free. Many believe he should still be locked up and that this is anything but a moment to be celebrated.

The only problem?

Prosecutors had already made a deal with Cosby preventing them from convicting the man. Here’s the New York Times:

In 2005, Bruce L. Castor Jr., who was then the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, issued a news release saying that he had declined to charge Mr. Cosby over the matter. Mr. Cosby then sat for depositions in a separate lawsuit filed against him by Ms. Constand, which he paid her $3.38 million to settle in 2006.

But a subsequent district attorney reversed Mr. Castor’s decision and charged the entertainer with assaulting Ms. Constand after all. In the trial, prosecutors used what Mr. Cosby had said in the deposition — his admission that in decades past, he had given quaaludes to women in an effort to have sex with them — as evidence against him.

“We hold that, when a prosecutor makes an unconditional promise of non-prosecution, and when the defendant relies upon that guarantee to the detriment of his constitutional right not to testify, the principle of fundamental fairness that undergirds due process of law in our criminal justice system demands that the promise be enforced,” wrote Justice David Norman Wecht.

Rashad has since deleted the above tweet, apologized, tweeted new tweets about sexual assault victims, but her first tweet remains true—if in poor taste.

It may be terrible to see Cosby walk free—though I doubt the elderly, legally-blind ex-comedian poses any threat to others at this point—but it is still a correction of a miscarriage of justice. It is not a tacit endorsement of rape on the part of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, either. It is a ruling based on due process and the constitutional rights of all Americans—criminals included—to be given a fair trial. Cosby was not given a fair trial. His rights were not afforded him. He was convicted because the prosecution did not follow due process. This is not justice.

Maybe Cosby walking free is also not justice, but then I worry more about the long reach of an unchecked state than I do about an old man living out whatever time he has left at home instead of behind bars.

It’s peculiar to me that so many on the left find it all so enraging, to the point that they lose all reason or sense of coherency when they discuss Cosby’s newfound freedom. For instance:

Lane Moore @hellolanemoore

i never wanna hear "well did you report it?" again. 60 women accused Bill Cosby, and even with 60 accusers we took years to convict, and now he's going free anyway. there are no consequences for rape and rapists know that. so let's be real: rape is fully legal in this country.

As writer Michael Tracey points out, rape is very much illegal still in this country, with nearly 200,000 convicted rapists behind bars.

It’s curiouser still that so many who have trumpeted “defund the police” and abolitionist sentiments are so quick to dismay at Cosby’s release. Isn’t this exactly what we want more of? Courts freeing people whose rights were stomped on by prosecutor’s and the police?

That Cosby is a bad man is immaterial. Evidence suggests that George Floyd was also a bad man. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die on the street with Derek Chauvin’s boot against his neck. Floyd deserved a day in court. So did Chauvin.

And what does abolitionism truly stand for in the context of prison reform if not releasing as many human beings from cages as possible—even, sometimes, bad ones? This is something I largely support. Our prisons are overcrowded. Our justice system is burgeoning under the weight of too many laws, too many—especially nonviolent—offenders behind bars.

Cages are a blunt instrument and we, as a society, should be wary of them.

But that’s a post for another time. For now, I want to talk about another black man who has been roundly vilified as a bad man who I also believe deserved his due process: George Floyd.

Floyd has been lauded by liberals and condemned by conservatives. He is a martyr for the BLM movement while many on the right have pointed out that he was, in life, a man of dubious morals.

None of that matters. Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin without due process. He was not afforded his constitutional rights to due process, to a fair trial and a jury of his peers, to any rights at all. The right to remain silent does not include a “forever” clause. Justice isn’t dying on the pavement after you’ve already been arrested.

Justice isn’t going to prison after prosecutors use your testimony against you after making a deal either. You can’t cry foul here and not there. There has to be some consistency, even if we’re forced to hold our nose. Nobody wants to see Cosby go free (or very few people, in any case) but allowing the prosecution to reneg on a deal and convict a man using what amounts to coerced testimony is worse. It sets an incredibly chilling precedent.

I linked to writer Michael Tracey above and I wanted to quote from that piece as well, because he makes what I consider a very astute observation about why so many on the left seem to abandon their “abolitionist” values the moment someone like Cosby is freed.

The importance of the Cosby episode lies in how it once again elucidates the endlessly conflicting impulses at the heart of contemporary left-liberalism, which is becoming something of a theme on this Substack. The point is not to take easy pot-shots at hypocrisy: that’s trivial. Who ultimately cares if some dopey Twitter comedian doesn’t have perfectly consistent political views? What’s important to recognize is that these paradoxes are evidence of the durability of contemporary left-liberalism. Media activists can “brand” as dedicated opponents of an overly-punitive and overly-carceral criminal justice system, then turn around and agitate for the carceral power of the state to be deployed on behalf of their social priorities — and hardly anyone perceives an issue. Why? Because contemporary left-liberalism is possessed of a wondrous flexibility that enables it to latch onto multiple strands of seemingly contradictory public passion all at once, and gloss right over the ensuing tensions — in furtherance of solidifying its grip on the Democratic Party, cultural organs, and the countless other institutions that conservatives are always complaining the Left controls.

It’s necessary to appreciate that what seems like a constant flitting back and forth between mutually exclusive impulses — which, again, to the untrained eye resembles run-of-the-mill hypocrisy — is actually an integral part of mainstream left-liberalism’s ongoing ascendance. Managing such contradictions doesn’t hinder the left-liberal acquisition of power, or overtaking of institutions. It enables this acquisition. Scoffing at garden-variety “hypocrisy” on Substack, or in a snarky podcast, is not going to make any difference.

But just as well, there’s insight here into why so many who attempt to adhere to a consistent set of principles will eventually run afoul of popular left-liberal consensus: it’s an eternally self-justifying, shape-shifting construction — organized around the accrual of power. Civil liberties are fashionable one day and of no use the next. Which makes sense, because civil liberties often need to be invoked to constrain the power that left-liberals are clearly desperate to wield against their adversaries.

That’s a brilliant observation and helps crystallize a lot of what I’ve been thinking about and puzzling over lately. Why has the left become so cavalier about things like constitutional rights, freedom of expression and all the rest, while still championing ostensibly noble causes like police and prison reform? Why do they drop those causes so quickly when the person being freed is someone like Bill Cosby, but ignore the sins of a George Floyd?

It’s because modern left-liberalism aka woke-ism aka the “authoritarian left” is not really concerned with a consistent set of principles to begin with, and this has only amplified during the Trump years—a dark time, no doubt, when many of us lost our minds to some degree. Certainly I did. 2021 has been like waking from a bad dream, both because of how terrible Trump was but also because of how many little, insidious ways his terribleness had a negative impact on my own judgment and the things I said or supported. I’m sobering up now, so to speak, and facing the hangover.

I suppose it’s as simple as this. I would rather adhere to a consistent set of principles and be on the losing side, or be maligned as some “nut job” by my peers than justify a set of incoherent, often contradictory values that are only consistent inasmuch as they support the activists on the left (or right) and the whims and convenience of whatever day it is, whatever story is breaking, whatever new deplorable needs cancelling.

I made a video with further musings on the Cosby case and our notions of justice when it comes to Cosby, Floyd and even the Chris Avellone controversy. Check it out, and thanks for subscribing!

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