Names and faces

▪ The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review two aspects of Bill Cosby’s 2018 conviction on sexual assault charges, delivering the 82-yearold comedian a long-sought chance to overturn his conviction. The court said it was interested in the decision by the trial judge to allow prosecutors to call as witnesses five other accusers — whose allegations fell outside of the criminal statute of limitations — to bolster the account of central accuser Andrea Constand. The judges also said they would consider arguments by Cosby’s lawyers that that he never should have been prosecuted in the first place because he purportedly made a deal with a former district attorney — never put in writing — that he would never be charged if he sat for a deposition in a civil case Constand had filed against him. That deposition, in which Cosby discussed his use of drugs in previous sexual encounters with women, was later used against him at his 2018 trial. Cosby — who was convicted for the 2004 assault of Constand, a Temple University employee — remains incarcerated, serving a three- to 10-year sentence. Defense attorney Brian W. Perry argued in the appeal that letting other accusers testify in #MeToo cases “flips constitutional jurisprudence on its head, and the ‘presumption of guilt,’ rather than the presumption of innocence, becomes the premise.” However, the judge said he found “striking similarities” in the women’s descriptions of their encounters with Cosby, and that the testimony was therefore permissible to show evidence of a “signature crime.”

▪ At the request of co-creator Tina Fey, four episodes of the comedy 30 Rock are being removed from circulation because they featured characters performing in blackface. The series aired on NBC from 2006 to 2013, but episodes are still being shown in television syndication and on streaming services including Hulu, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Peacock. Fey, who also starred as Liz Lemon in the series about the backstage world of a television show, said in a note to distributors that “I understand now that ‘intent’ is not a free pass for white people to use these images.” “I apologize for the pain they have caused,” Fey wrote. “Going forward, no comedy-loving kid really needs to stumble on these tropes and be stung by their ugliness.” The elimination of the 30 Rock episodes is the latest example of the entertainment world responding to protests against police treatment of black people. Others include the cancellation of the long-running TV show Cops and temporary removal of Gone With the Wind from the HBO Max service.

Fey

Cosby