A state appellate court panel has dismissed an appeal filed on behalf of the man convicted of killing actor Bill Cosby’s son during a 1997 ambush murder in the Sepulveda Pass.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal noted Tuesday that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lauren Weis Birnstein had found that she was not required to respond or to take any action on the defense’s “invitation to recall and resentence petitioner” Michael Markhasev.
Markhasev is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole for the Jan. 16, 1997, killing of Ennis Cosby during an attempted robbery.
Through his counsel, Markhasev had filed an “invitation to recall and resentence” him, in a November 2024 petition that included citations to his rehabilitative efforts and educational achievements while behind bars and letters of support, along with his handwritten “revised and updated reentry plans.”
Markhasev “timely appealed” the judge’s decision not to take any action, but later submitted a supplemental brief in which he stated that he accepted the trial court’s decision and requested that the appeal be closed, according to the appellate court panel’s four-page ruling.
Markhasev had previously abandoned another appeal, writing in a one-page handwritten letter in February 2001, “I am guilty and I want to do the right thing.”
“… This is way overdue, and although my apology is too late, it’s still the right thing to do,” Markhasev wrote then, ending the appeal initiated on his behalf after his 1998 sentencing.