Cosby Extortion Conviction Overturned

A federal appeals court Wednesday overturned Autumn Jackson’s conviction on charges that she tried to extort $40 million from Bill Cosby by threatening to tell the tabloids she was his daughter born out of wedlock.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the judge improperly instructed the jury on the law pertaining to extortion. The court also overturned the convictions of two accomplices for the same reason, ordering the case returned to the lower court for retrial.

The court added, however, that “evidence at trial was plainly sufficient to support verdicts of guilty had the jury been properly instructed.”

Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White, said prosecutors haven’t decided whether to appeal or ask for a retrial.

Jackson, 24, was sentenced in 1997 to two years and two months in prison after she was convicted of extortion, conspiracy and crossing state lines to commit a crime. She has served slightly more than half of the sentence.

One of her lawyers, Robert Baum, said prosecutors had agreed to let Jackson be freed on bail as soon as today.

The appeals court said the judge should have instructed the jurors that, to convict Jackson, they needed to find that she had wrongful intent. That would have allowed the jury to consider whether Jackson truly believed that she was Cosby’s daughter and therefore did not have any wrongful intent.

Prosecutors said Jackson demanded the money from Cosby on Jan. 16, 1997--the day Cosby’s 27-year-old son, Ennis, was shot to death in a robbery while changing a flat tire in Los Angeles. If Cosby failed to comply, she said, she would tell her story to the supermarket tabloids. The slaying of Cosby’s son was unrelated to the plot.

Cosby acknowledged an affair with Jackson’s mother in the 1970s but denied that he is Jackson’s father, telling jurors that he told her: “I will be for you a father figure, but I am not your father.”

The issue of paternity was ruled irrelevant to the charges. Cosby took a paternity test after the trial to try to settle the dispute, but Jackson and her mother declined to take blood tests.

The appeals court also overturned the case against Jose Medina, who was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, and Boris Sabas, who got three months behind bars.