The views information or opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals.

This content is not intended to malign or disparage any organization, group, or individual.

Hello and welcome to True Crime Daily's The Sidebar, where we take you inside the courtroom of the most high profile and notorious trials from across the country.

I'm your host, Joshua Ritter.

Currently a criminal defense lawyer based here in Los Angeles, previously I was a prosecutor with the LA District Attorney's Office for close to a decade.

We're recording this on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021.

Today we are joined by Jennifer Bongene, a seasoned attorney with extensive experience in criminal defense and civil rights litigation.

She's also the lawyer largely responsible for overturning the sexual assault conviction of Bill Cosby.

And today, as you might have guessed it, we're discussing the Bill Cosby trial. Welcome, Jennifer.

Thank you for having me, Josh.

Thank you for coming on. Before we jump into Bill Cosby and all the drama and details behind all of that, and how this case was one that truly captured the attention of the entire nation, I wanted you to tell us a little bit about your background and what your legal practice involves today.

Sure. So I've been an attorney for about 20 years, and I have a boutique practice principally based in New York City, although I practice in a number of states, primarily the state of New York, the state of New Jersey, and the state of Illinois.

I went to law school in Chicago, and I have maintained a presence there for many years, and I would say about 50% of my work is based in Chicago.

I started as a criminal defense attorney doing a pellet work as a public defender in Chicago, and then I moved to New York and started my own practice and migrated into more trial work and also post conviction work, and that's where we primarily see the reversals of convictions based on actual innocence where we can bring new evidence before the court when someone has compelling claims of innocence.

And so I do a lot of wrongful conviction work. I also, of course, represent Mr. Cosby, which is one of the more high profile cases I've handled over the years, and I continue to do a pellet work, and I also do civil rights litigation.

Well, in addition to getting people's convictions reversed because of miscarriages of justice, I then go back and sue the law enforcement or the prosecutors sometimes who are responsible for those miscarriages of justice, and we also do police brutality cases.

So we have a very, I would say broad practice, but all very much focused in criminal defense criminal justice and miscarriages of justice, and that was what I aim to create, and I feel like we're doing a pretty good job of seeing my vision through.

Well, congratulations to you and you've obviously had a tremendous amount of success. I was going to say that is that is certainly having your, your spoon in a lot of different pots because usually criminal attorneys kind of stick to one niche, one kind of little cottage industry thing that they're comfortable with, but to be able to handle a pellet stuff and post conviction and trial work and and in several different jurisdictions, my hat goes off to you. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah, absolutely interesting. I'm sure it does. I have to memorize a lot of rules, and if you don't get the rules right, you know how it works, Josh, you get in trouble with the court.

Oh, yeah. And, and, and I'll say too, I, you know, we practice primarily in California, but we've done stuff out of state, but even in California, you know, upstate California from Southern California, you're in the same state courtroom system, but you might as well be in an entirely different jurisdiction altogether because it's just the way they are.

The way they operate, the way they, the, the acronyms that they refer to things as, so I can imagine going from Illinois to New York and a pellet and post conviction and federal and state, it's got to be a lot to hold it all together.

Yeah, I mean, the federal system even judges have their own, each judge has their own peculiar rules for their own courtroom. So yeah, it's a lot, but it keeps it interesting. And I actually enjoy it. It keeps my brain nice and nimble.

...