Actress and new Howard University Dean Phylicia Rashad, who played comedian Bill Cosby's television wife for nearly eight years, celebrated Wednesday's Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to reverse his 2018 conviction and sentencing on sexual assault charges.
''FINALLY!!! A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected,'' Rashad, who takes over dean duties as dean for the Howard University College of Fine Arts on Thursday, said Wednesday in a post on Twitter.
Cosby, 83, was released after serving three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
Constand was then Temple University's director of basketball operations.
She testified that Cosby drugged and then sexually assaulted her when she visited the home but did not go to the police until a year later.
Then-Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor determined at the time that he would have a hard time with Constand's credibility and did not have any forensic evidence for the criminal trial, so he decided not to prosecute the case, according to court documents.
Instead of a criminal conviction, however, the agreement not to prosecute then required Cosby to testify at Constand's civil trial, where he admitted giving her Quaaludes before having sex with her.
A subsequent district attorney then used that admission to criminally charge Cosby, and it was the basis for his conviction and sentence, violating his due process rights by changing the agreement, the court found.
''The decision to charge, or not to charge, a defendant can be conditioned, modified, or revoked at the discretion of the prosecutor,'' the court's ruling said. ''However, the discretion vested in our Commonwealth's prosecutors, however vast, does not mean that its exercise is free of the constraints of due process.''
Rashad, 73, played Cosby's television wife, Claire Huxtable, for eight seasons and has been a constant voice of support for the embattled star since the allegations from Constand and dozens of other women became public.
The case was one of the first to spark the #MeToo movement regarding the sexual assault of women, which brought several key Hollywood figures, like producer Harvey Weinstein, into public scandal.
Rashad, a Howard alumnus, was named dean in May and is to start the job July 1, according to the school.
After her post, several responses criticized her position.
''As a @HowardU School of Fine Arts alum, and as a survivor, this tweet from @phyliciarashad is disappointing,'' Alicia Sanchez replied. ''I hope we can have a dean who believes and respects survivors.''
''Dean Rashad, Is this how you're going to react when a Howard CoFA student tells you they were assaulted by another student if that student happens to be someone you like and admire,'' culture writer Soraya McDonald responded. ''Because what you're telling Howard women is that you don't care if they're raped.''
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