Bill Cosby was sentenced to 3-10 years in prison on Tuesday after he was found guilty for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. After Cosby was sentenced, his wife of 54 years, Camille Cosby, issued a statement about his guilty verdict. According to Fox News , Camille claimed the prosecution used “falsified evidence” to convict her husband.
The statement claims that District Attorney Kevin Steele “presented doctored audio of a recorded phone conversation between Cosby and Constand’s mother, Gianna.”
“After being tipped off by a recent online publication that a tape-recording Mr. Steele played during [the] trial was doctored, Mr. Cosby retained a forensic expert to conduct an audio authenticity analysis of the recording,” the statement read. It added that Gianna taped Cosby in a 2005 conversation without his knowledge. “That recording was provided to Bruce Castor while he was DA of Montgomery County. Mr. Castor determined that Gianna Constand’s surreptitious recording constituted a potential felony under Pennsylvania law, which required Ms. Constand to obtain Mr. Cosby’s consent to the recording.”
Steele rejected Camille’s claims, saying they were little more than a Hail Mary. Camille claimed that Steele beat Castor for the position of District Attorney because he slammed him in the media for not going after Cosby. After Steele became the DA, Camille’s statement read, he used the recording in both of Cosby’s trials, and its presence helped secure a guilty verdict for Cosby. She claimed that the original recording was “doctored and contained information that would exonerate Mr. Cosby.”
“The defense team immediately sent its copy of the recording to a forensic expert, who, after extensive analysis, has unequivocally concluded: ‘This is not a true representation of the original content or conversation. Without question, this is not an authentic recording,’” Camille’s statement read.
She noted that Steele never let on that the tape was “inauthentic,” and that even the Montgomery County detectives “acknowledged to the defense team that they could not authenticate the recording and did not know who made the version of the recording played at trial.”
Camille statement ended with the claim that the alteration of the tape was “prejudicial,” and played a role in her husband not receiving a fair trial. She added that the Defense plans to file a motion “seeking immediate relief for the prosecution’s use of this falsified evidence.”
Constand is one of nearly 60 women who came out against Cosby and accused him of sexual assault. Her case is one of the only ones that were able to be prosecuted since many of the alleged assaults were passed the statute of limitations.