Welcome to Schemes. Fun fact, 2021 is halfway over. But while the last six months were probably

better than the first six months of 2020, things are far from perfect. Parts of the U.S.

have been baking under extreme heat. A high rise fell down despite multiple safety warnings.

A COVID variant is wreaking havoc around the world, and even the job market is wacky.

It's a lot, but we promise we're here to make you smarter and the news less overwhelming.

I'm Alex Carr, let's skim this.

Before we get into this week's top story, we just want to note this story mentioned sexual

assault, which could be triggering to some listeners.

On Wednesday, Bill Cosby was released from prison. In 2018, he was found guilty of aggravated

indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constant. He was supposed

to serve a three to 10 year sentence. But yesterday, after only two years, the Pennsylvania

State Supreme Court ordered Cosby to be released. To get some context on what happened and

why this sudden release was surprising to a lot of people, we phoned up Fatima Goss

Graves. She's the president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center and one of the

co-founders of the Times Up Legal Defense Fund. Starting off, I would love to just ask

you to break down why Bill Cosby was released from prison.

Well, the first thing I should say, it was a highly unusual opinion that came out of

the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And so in some ways, I wonder if this opinion will end

up applying to Bill Cosby and only Bill Cosby going forward. But what the court basically

said was that the prosecutor in the case had made the sort of promises to Bill Cosby

that led him to believe he could never be prosecuted. And then subsequently prosecuting

him and using information that had been revealed in a civil case that that violated his due process

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