Really weird to see a bunch of people make it abundantly clear that they don't care about anyone's rights and that they only care about seeing this specific rapist in prison, as if there wasn't a justice system that has to be administered.
As far as the victims' rights pertain to cosby's trials they're being respected.
It doesn't sound like you know what rights victims have in the US. They're essentially entitled to being kept informed about the trial and restitution if the court assigns blame (the restitution can be pursued outside of the criminal arena in the civil arena). In this case, testimony given under a non-prosecution agreement was used to criminally prosecute the person who gave the testimony: The person was convicted unjustly as their 5th amendment rights (due process in conjunction with rights against self-incrimination) were violated to obtain that conviction. This doesn't set aside the civil decision. The victims who won their civil case due to the testimony still received their restitution. No victim has the right to imprison people who haven't been justly convicted. All of the victim's rights were maintained.
A reminder: cosby would have never been tried if not for the testimony. From the
penn supreme court's decision:
The admissible evidence was essentially one person's account of something that happened years prior. Cosby was forced to testify:
His rights were absolutely violated: They forced him to testify, then used that testimony in a criminal prosecution against him.
To recap: The victims' rights were maintained. The rapist's rights weren't.
Do people really not understand that no one has a specific right if that right can be violated at will by the branch of government that is supposed to be adjudicating what rights exist? The fact that injustice exists is not an excuse to violate people's rights yourself. Sounds like the members of the state supreme court took that message to heart. To wit:
Hammurabi's code was about a thousand years before rome was founded. The need for protections from persecution via the gov'ts judicial system was promulgated from some of the first laws written (that we have a record of) not allowing any, and the recognition that horror and great injustice lies down that road. That's the immorality (or, 'mess of a legal system' as you put it) that lawyers are trying to avoid by maintaining and following procedures for 'due process' and 'zealous representation': Capricious convictions of people by an immoral gov't. We, as a society, have judged that it's morally better to free a guilty man than imprison an innocent, while also judging the even application of law to be a moral good.