In her first comments since her husband Bill Cosby was convicted of three counts of aggravated sexual assault last week, Camille Cosby likened her husband’s treatment to the lynching of Emmett Till in Jim Crow-era Mississippi and claims “mob justice” was inflicted on the comedy icon, according to a statement posted to her husband’s Facebook page.
In his trial, Bill Cosby was found guilty on charges he drugged and sexually assaulted Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. In the run-up to the trial and amid dozens of allegations emerging against him, he lost his Cosby Show syndication deals, his product endorsements, his many honorary degrees from universities, and his reputation as “America’s Dad.”
Camille said the treatment of her husband in the justice system was like the case of Till, in which a white woman accused the 14-year-old black boy of offending her, which led to Till’s death at the hands of a lynch mob in 1955. Decades later, the woman admitted that she lied and that her testimony was false. Mrs. Cosby also claimed her husband’s case was like the conviction of Darryl Hunt, who was proven to be wrongfully held in prison for the “rape and murder of a white woman.”
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“Since when are all accusers truthful? History disproves that,” she wrote. “These are just two of many tragic instances of our justice system utterly and routinely failing to protect African Americans falsely accused in so-called courts of law and the entirely unfair court of public opinion.”
She also questioned the entire basis of the American justice system—the U.S. Constitution—citing historian Howard Zinn in claiming the country’s founders’ “We the people” statement was not actually all-inclusive, saying that “most people were not included in that original draft of the Constitution; no women, Native Americans, poor white men; and, absolutely, no enslaved Africans.”
In the specific case of her husband, Camille claims the “unproven accusations evolved into lynch mobs,” referencing the 60 women that came forward alleging that Bill assaulted them. She claims the parties involved “coerced” his demise.
“The worst injustices, however, have been carried out in the Pennsylvania Montgomery County Courthouse,” she said, accusing the district attorney’s office of an “unethical campaign” that promised a guilty verdict for her husband “all based on what [she] believe[s] to be a falsified account by the newly elected district attorney’s key witness.” She then called for a “criminal investigation” into the district attorney and “his cohorts,” calling them “exploitive and corrupt people, whose primary purpose is to advance themselves professionally and economically at the expense of Mr. Cosby’s life.”
After pulling in constitutionality and civil rights to aid in the defense of her husband, Camille finished off her statement claiming that the alleged injustices of her husband in court were injustices to the nation.
“This is mob justice, not real justice. This tragedy must be undone not just for Bill Cosby, but for the country,” she said. “Someday the truth will prevail, it always does.”
