In her dogged pursuit of justice, the wife of legendary comedian Bill Cosby said Friday that she’s hired a former prosecutor to oversee an investigation into the bias and unethical behavior of Montgomery County, Pa., Judge Steven T. O’Neill.
Cosby is set to be sentenced on Monday after being convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. However, several developments have left his wife, Camille, and numerous legal experts more certain that the comedian didn’t receive a fair trial, mostly because of the many controversial rulings by O’Neill.
On Friday, The Black Press reported exclusively that a northern Virginia firm that’s routinely used by the FBI to authenticate or refute evidence found that a key telephone recording that helped to convict Cosby was indeed doctored.
That’s resulted in Cosby attorney Joe Green marching into the Montgomery County Courthouse seeking a sit-down with O’Neill.
Camille Cosby, the legend’s wife of more than a half-century, recently filed a request for a full investigation into O’Neill with the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board at the state’s capitol in Harrisburg. Her husband’s request for O’Neill to recuse himself was denied by O’Neill this week and sentencing of the icon remains set for Monday, Sept. 24.
On Friday, Camille Cosby released another statement announcing why she’s hired a seasoned attorney who plans to sit in on the sentencing hearing Monday.
“In light of Judge O’Neill’s continuing unethical conduct, I have retained a former prosecutor based in Harrisburg, Brian W. Perry, to facilitate my efforts to uncover the truth regarding the longstanding and ongoing feud between [former District Attorney Bruce Castor] and the judge,” she wrote. “Mr. Perry will provide the Judicial Conduct Board with recent written communications from Mr. Castor that contradict the judge’s claim that there is no grudge.
“For example, an email from Mr. Castor references Judge O’Neill as ‘A judge with an enormous potential bias [who] did not disclose that possible bias to the lawyers to give them the option to seek a new judge,’” she said, specifically referencing an email Castor sent to The Washington Informer on March 27.
Camille Cosby’s statement, in part:
One week prior to my request for investigation, Bill Cosby filed a motion demanding that the judge provide a full accounting of his longstanding feud with and bias against Bruce Castor, the former DA of Montgomery County.
The motion explained that Mr. Cosby retained a former FBI agent to investigate the relationship of Messrs. Castor and O’Neill after recently being tipped off about their feud in an unsourced tabloid article. The former agent discovered that, in 1999, when Messrs. O’Neill and Castor were running against each other to become DA, Mr. Castor ordered a female prosecutor whom Mr. O’Neill had dated to visibly support Mr. Castor during a key debate.
Embarrassed in this way, Mr. O’Neill performed poorly and withdrew from the race. Shortly after Mr. Cosby filed the recusal motion on September 11, 2018, his defense team issued subpoenas requiring the testimony of, among others, the former female DA who had been ordered to disrupt the debate.
The plan was to present their testimony on September 24, the first day of a two-day hearing that the judge had previously scheduled for the sentencing of Mr. Cosby.
Such a hearing would expose the truth regarding the judge’s bias. But Judge O’Neill, on September 19, issued an order denying the request for a hearing. He claims that the motion is “untimely”because Mr. Cosby’s previous lawyers did not file the motion the moment the unsourced tabloid article reported it on March 28, 2018.
He additionally claims that, in any event, he became a judge when Mr. Castor was DA and “[n]ot once during his tenure as District Attorney was Mr. Castor, or anyone else, heard to ascribe some sort of ‘grudge’ or prejudice against Mr. Castor.
Both of these claims are false, as Mr. Castor’s own emails [can attest].
In addition to overseeing my investigative referral to the Judicial Conduct Board, Mr. Perry will be present for the sentencing hearing of Bill Cosby on September 24 and 25, 2018, for the purpose of observing the judge’s unethical conduct firsthand and then reporting such conduct to the Judicial Board.