It is true that the ability to hire a team of “money is no object” lawyers often means that a wealthy criminal defendant will not be found guilty. With celebrities too, the jury, may think they “know” the defendant, and are thus sympathetic to not convicting him or her.

However, a major problem with the Cosby case is effect of the passage of time on memory. The events Cosby is being tried for happened in 2004. That’s 13-year between the incident and his trial. No matter who you are, your memory of events that happened over ten years ago will be different than how you originally remembered them. Any decent attorney will be able to find discrepancies between what the victim says at trial and what she said previously and use those discrepancies to cast doubt upon everything the witness says. If there is anything to blame for this mistrial, it isn’t money or celebrity. Instead, blame the police who did nothing when this rape was first reported in 2004.