WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GO OUT AND REPORT THE FUCKING NEWS?!?!?
— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) 9:39 pm – July 7, 2015
That was a real tweet from a fictional person complaining about yesterday’s big story: Greece China The Presidential Election Bill Cosby.
It’s all that the news outlets talked about:
(CNN) Bill Cosby has admitted to getting prescription Quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with, newly released documents show.
The documents, dating back to 2005, stem from a civil lawsuit filed by Andrea Constand — one of the dozens of women who have publicly accused the comedian of sexual assault. The records were made public Monday after The Associated Press went to court to compel their release.
I 
thought it was old news, to be honest. With four dozen women making these claims? Who didn’t think he was a rapist? I mean, even if you assume (as I do) that some of these women are just hopping on the bandwagon and making up things just to get some money… it doesn’t erase the fact that… well, there’s a friggin bandwagon of women who have the same allegations. Of course there’s truth there. The question hasn’t been whether Cosby is guilty of rape; the question is how many.
I’ve never been a Cosby fan, but I certainly had nothing against him. And when the rumors first came out, I, like most people, remained neutral (and a little saddened) by the allegations. But at some point, it reached a critical mass, and like everyone (or so I thought), I was very saddened and disgusted. Although… as it turns out… apparently, Cosby still had his defenders. I wasn’t aware of that. Hopefully, they have all shut up now.
Anyway, the reason we know about Cosby — and I mean, really know — is because a sealed deposition was made public by a judge in response to a motion by the Associated Press. And unsealing a sealed deposition, that is very unusual. And troubling.
There are many reasons why sealed court records (and depositions) are good things that serve a public purpose. For one thing, they allow court cases to settle. That unclogs the courts by quite a bit. So having things sealed from the public encourages litigants to settle their cases rather than fight it out at taxpayer expense.
Sealed court records and depositions also allow people to continue with their lives, giving them second chances. A good example of this is the teenage drunk driver or drug user. Many times, after serving their “time” (community service or whatever), records of their arrest and conviction are sealed so that it won’t dog them forever. I think society is best served by this kind of compassion.
So the practice of sealing records is a good thing. But it only works if people believe that when something is sealed, it STAYS sealed. I mean, if sealing a record gets me to settle a lawsuit, why would I settle if I believed that some court could come along years later and UNseal it? For that reason, it is (and should be) a high bar for a court to come along and unseal a record.
With this in mind, I read the opinion and other documents relating to the sealed record (these documents are attached to this post, under the fold)….
… and I think the judge erred in some respects.
Essentially, the media has been reporting that the judge allowed the deposition to be unsealed because Cosby was a hypocrite — his public persona as a moralist is contradicted by his testimony in which he essentially admits to giving Quaaludes to women in order to rape them. No, I thought to myself, if only because I believe that people are neither all “white” nor all “black”. They are not entirely villains or entirely heroes. Very good people can do some very VERY bad things. We are ALL contradictions. Hopefully our “bad” is not as bad as Cosby’s. But the judge didn’t do it because Cosby had been bad. He did it because Cosby was being contradictory in his “persona”.
Now, I’ve heard the phrase “Hitler liked dogs and children” as a way to say, “Well if the bad outweighs the good, what difference does it make?” And I hear that. I don’t think that whatever good Bill Cosby did — his charity, his work in children’s education, etc. — outweighs his crimes. I’m just saying that he’s not a hypocrite for being both GOOD and BAD; he’s human. I’m saying we shouldn’t change the legal burden for unsealing depositions simply because he’s moral in some ways and immoral (to say the least) in other ways.
I’m not the only one to think this. Smerconish covered this as well, and here the results of his poll are at the right.
Let me be clear lest anything think I am a Cosby defender: The judge said that the interests of the Associated Press outweighed the privacy interests of Cosby — but NOT because Cosby was famous, and NOT because he was guilty of rape (in fact, the judge said that Cosby is innocent until proven otherwise)…. but because Cosby was being inconsistent with his morality. That’s the core reason why Cosby was not entitled to have the deposition stay sealed.
And I am asking the reader to THINK about that reasoning behind the decision, separate and apart from the facts (and grotesque-ness) of Bill Cosby: Should a person’s privacy be invaded by the courts because that person is “morally inconsistent”? Because that is the precedent of this decision. And that principle, applied elsewhere (applied to YOU, dear reader) should be troubling.
Fortunately, the judge considered other factors. And fortunately, on those factors, I think the court got it right. For one thing, the court noted that the deposition, which was 10 years old, was under interim seal. The court said (correctly in my view), that if Cosby was soooooo worried about his private statements in the deposition, he would have made a motion to make sure the deposition was permanently sealed a long time ago. But Cosby and his lawyers didn’t.
So I’m okay with the outcome, although only partially okay with the rationale.
In the end, Cosby is toast and that’s the most important thing. The truth will out, one way or another. And once again, we are having the much needed conversation about rape. Sadly, it doesn’t sink in. I actually heard Gloria Allred on CNN yesterday woman-splaining to Wolf Blitzer in an annoyed voice (I’m paraphrasing): “And guess what, Wolf? Even if a woman says yes, and then later on passes out for ANY reason, it is NOT consent and therefore it is rape!”. And I shook my head. Of course Allred was annoyed — here we are in the 21st century, and people STILL have to be told these things, and it blows my mind.