Wife: Cosby convicted by ‘mob justice, not real justice’

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bill Cosby’s wife is calling for a criminal investigation into the prosecutor behind his sexual assault conviction, saying the case was “mob justice, not real justice” and a “tragedy” that must be undone.

Camille Cosby commented on the case for the first time on Thursday in a statement issued through a spokesman a week after her husband of 54 years was convicted of aggravated indecent assault.

Camille Cosby called her husband’s chief accuser Andrea Constand a liar and compared the dozens of other women who’ve accused her husband to “lynch mobs” and his treatment to that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy lynched in 1955 over false allegations he flirted with a white woman.

Prosecutors and Constand’s lawyers did not immediately respond to messages.

The 80-year-old Cosby, who earned a reputation as America’s Dad playing Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the top-rated family sitcom “The Cosby Show,” is now a prisoner in the suburban Philadelphia mansion where the encounter with Constand occurred. Cosby says the encounter was consensual, but he now faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars as he awaits sentencing, likely within the next three months.

Cosby’s publicist has also declared his conviction a “public lynching,” and his lawyers have vowed to appeal.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, as Constand has done.