Supreme Court declines to hear case on reinstating Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction

Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a request from Pennsylvania prosecutors to review a state supreme court decision that overturned Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction, leaving the ruling from Pennsylvania's high court that freed him from prison intact.

Prosecutors from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, asked the justices to wade into the case involving Cosby in November and argued the June decision from the state supreme court sets a "dangerous precedent" that is in tension with federal and state cases. The nation's highest court, though, spurned their bid to reinstate Cosby's conviction and, as is usual, did not explain its decision not to hear the case.

The decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to toss out Cosby's 2018 sexual assault conviction turned on a press release issued more than a decade earlier by Bruce Castor, who was then serving as the Montgomery County district attorney. Castor was in charge of investigating the criminal complaint against Cosby made by Andrea Constand, a former employee at Temple University who said Cosby sexually assaulted her at his home in 2004.