Bill Cosby Released From Prison After Overturned Sexual Assault Conviction: Wife Camille Is ‘Relieved’

After serving more than two years behind bars, Bill Cosby officially walked free on Wednesday, June 30, following news that his sexual assault conviction was overturned due to an “unfair trial,” In Touch can confirm.  

Cosby, 83, left the State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and was greeted by his legal team and loved ones. He was later spotted waving from inside a car upon his arrival home.

“We are headed over there (the state prison) now,” the actor’s attorney Brian Perry said in a statement obtained by In Touch ahead of his release. “He should be out in the next couple of hours. Hopefully we can get him out soon.”

Perry also noted that Cosby’s longtime wife, Camille Cosby, was going to be present for her spouse’s exit from prison. After the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court vacated the past judgment against the former stand-up comedian, Camille is “ecstatic, relieved and happy … I talked to her today,” Perry said. “She lives up there so I assume we will meet, and all be there.”

Camille, 77, previously spoke out about her husband in a rare June 2020 interview, telling ABC News that she remained in touch with Cosby, although she didn’t pay him any visits when he was behind bars. “In terms of visiting him, no, I do not want to see my husband in that kind of an environment — and he doesn’t want me to see him in that kind of environment,” she said. “So, we are in sync with that but I speak to him every single day.” 

The Childhood author and Camille have been married since January 1964 and they welcomed five kids together, Erika, Erinn, Ennis, Ensa and Evin. Ennis was murdered in 1997 and Ensa died of renal disease in 2018.

In September 2018, Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. However, in 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear two points in Cosby’s appeal, which led to the decision ultimately being overturned on Wednesday, June 30.

“When an unconditional charging decision is made publicly and with the intent to induce action and reliance by the defendant, and when the defendant does so to his detriment (and in some instances upon the advice of counsel), denying the defendant the benefit of that decision is an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was foregone for more than a decade,” the court ruled. “No mere changing of the guard strips that circumstance of its inequity … For these reasons, Cosby’s convictions and judgment of sentence are vacated, and he is discharged.”