Bill Cosby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Over a year after he was first incarcerated for the sexual assault of Andrea Constand, the actor and comedian \u2014 who is serving three to 10 years \u2014 has given his first interview. In it, the 82-year-old maintained his innocence from his Pennsylvania correctional institution, Phoenix, which is located outside Philadelphia, and, because of that, he expects to serve the entire sentence. Cosby also called his trial a \u201cset up\u201d and the jurors \u201cimposters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have eight years and nine months left,\u201d Cosby told National Newspaper Publishers Association\u2019s BlackPressUSA.com, clearly not believing he will leave prison on the early side of his sentence. \u201cWhen I come up for parole, they\u2019re not going to hear me say that I have remorse. I was there. I don\u2019t care what group of people come along and talk about this when they weren\u2019t there. They don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cosby, who is appealing his sentence, said his trial was \u201call a setup. That whole jury thing. They were imposters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cosby referred to an incident after the jury was selected when an alternate juror claimed to have overheard a seated juror say that Cosby was guilty. While the issue was raised by Cosby\u2019s legal team with the judge, that judge apparently found insufficient evidence of it because the juror remained.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something attorneys will tell you is called a payoff,\u201d Cosby said.<\/p>\n
He tied his sentence to racial injustice, saying, \u201cI know what they\u2019ve done to my people. But my people are going to view me and say, \u2018That boy looks good. That boy is strong.\u2019 I have too many heroes that I\u2019ve sat with. Too many heroes whom I listened to like John Henrik Clarke, Kenneth Clark, and Dorothy Height. Those people are very strong, and they saw the rejection of their people. This is political. I can see the whole thing.\u201d (He previously compared himself to political prisoners including Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.)<\/p>\n
But Cosby \u2014 who is in general population with prisoners who serve as his helpers, due to his age and being legally blind \u2014 called himself a \u201cprivileged man in prison.\u201d He also called his small cell his \u201cpenthouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interview took place over several phone calls and Cosby\u2019s spokesperson, Andrew Wyatt, on the line for each one. A Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokesperson tells Yahoo Entertainment that \u201creporters are like any other visitor. They need to be on the inmate approved visitor list for an in-person visit, or they can do it via phone,\u201d which is how Cosby\u2019s interview was conducted.<\/p>\n
Much of the interview centred on what Cosby says he\u2019s doing to help his fellow black inmates while incarcerated. He said he frequently speaks at the prison reform program Mann Up\u2019s meetings, which are meant to encourage and empower African American inmates. Of course, prior to his conviction Cosby was famously critical of the African-American community \u2014 and acknowledged that. He said he probably shouldn\u2019t have given his infamous 2004 \u201cPound Cake speech,\u201d in which he criticized poor blacks for not living up to the promise of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are under siege,\u201d he said of African Americans. \u201cThis thing with the drugs and the different pockets of the neighbourhoods where it\u2019s going on. When you look at what drugs are doing \u2026 things that make these people drive around and shoot into crowds. The insanity of what is the cause to the brain by all the drugs these people are dealing with. It\u2019s exactly what I warned them about in 2004. They\u2019ve thrown education out the window. They\u2019ve thrown respect for the family out the window, and they\u2019re blaming each other for what\u2019s going on. There is post-traumatic stress syndrome, and there are also bad manners.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Cosby said he\u2019s helping his fellow inmates, some of whom went on the record for the interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a psychiatrist and I\u2019m not a psychologist,\u201d Cosby said. \u201cI\u2019m an educator, and what I look forward to is talking to this group of 400 or so men. Some of them here are in their 70s, in their 50s, their 40s, 30s, and 20s. I tell them what I know and what I feel. I feel that everything that I said in 2004, there is a light [behind it]. The mistake I made [in 2004] is making it sound like all the people were making the infractions, and that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the inmates talked about how Cosby enters the lectures \u201cwith his fist in the air and all of these men rise up and applaud him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cosby seems to have a lot of pull on the inside. He also claimed he talked one of the inmates into calling off a hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard a guy say to someone that if someone did something he didn\u2019t like, he\u2019d go out and get all his boys and they\u2019d kill the fella,\u201d Cosby recalled. \u201cI said, how much sense does that make? You call your boys, and they want to kill him. I said to look at all the people you\u2019ve got involved, and when you get caught, you are all going to jail, and you got one dead fella. \u2018Call if off,\u2019 I told the guy. I said to him that you need to call your friends, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cosby also used the interview as a platform to blame race, not his conviction or the accusations of sexual misconduct by 60 some women, for being behind his iconic show The Cosby Show being pulled from the air. He said it was a conspiracy to remove the positive representation of black characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen The Cosby Show came on with the Huxtables, just think about it. While it was running, other networks and even the media were doing jobs on trying to belittle whatever it represented,\u201d Cosby said.\u201cThey did not like what The Cosby Show looked like for us, and many of us traded into it. Now, look at what has happened. They\u2019ve taken everything that I\u2019ve done and swept it into a place where it would not be shown.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April 2018, Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, for drugging and sexually assaulting Temple University employee Constand in 2004. In September of that year, he was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison with the judge ruling that the TV star is a \u201csexually violent predator.\u201d He was taken into custody immediately. In June, he appealed his conviction. <\/p>\n
Source: Foxnews.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bill Cosby Over a year after he was first incarcerated for the sexual assault of Andrea Constand, the actor and comedian \u2014 who is serving three to 10 years \u2014 has given his first interview. In it, the 82-year-old maintained his innocence from his Pennsylvania correctional institution, Phoenix, which is located outside Philadelphia, and, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":752701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\n
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