Bill Cosby
A number of inmates across the country have been angling for a release from prison amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes convicted sex offender Bill Cosby, 82. Well, that isn’t happening for him any time soon, at least as things stand.
“Sex offenders are not eligible under the reprieve criteria,” a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokesperson told Fox News.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released an executive order on April 10, making certain prisoners eligible for release amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We must reduce our inmate population to be able to manage this virus,” Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel said. “Without this temporary program, we are risking the health, and potentially lives, of employees and inmates. We can safely release individuals to the community to reduce their vulnerability and allow the department to successfully manage COVID-19.”
There are strict boundaries on this, however. Inmates had to be considered non-violent, and would otherwise be eligible for released in the next nine months. There is one exception: if they were “considered at high risk for complications of coronavirus” and were within a year’s worth of release.
At 82 years old, Cosby certainly checks one of those boxes. But he was sentenced to three-to-10 years in prison back in September 2018, and the state officially considers him a “sexually violent predator” for drugging and abusing former Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his Montgomery County home in 2004. The defendant’s first trial ended with a hung jury, but the second ended in his conviction after five other women testified that he’d sexually abused them.
On Saturday, the inmate’s spokespeople renewed a call to get let out of prison.
“During a visit to the infirmary at SCI-Phoenix for high blood pressure issues, Mr. Cosby was informed that the carotid arteries on the right and left side of his neck had 90% blockage due to plaque build-up (the carotid arteries are the major blood vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain, neck and face),” said a statement from Cosby’s Facebook account. “Those surgeries were done separately and they were successful. Mr. Cosby now takes medication for high blood pressure and he is 100% blind from glaucoma.”
[Image via Mark Makela/Getty Images]
