Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Pedophile Detector’ Prevails As Alabama Judge Roy Moore Loses Appeal

Alabama Judge Roy Moore’s campaign for U.S. Senate did not go well. When he ran in 2017 in a special election, his campaign was hit with allegations that he had sexually assaulted an underage girl. After he lost that election, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen added insult to injury with a parody interview, which Moore has called defamatory.

First, it was the sexual misconduct allegations, which started in 2017, when, as Washington Post reported, a woman named Leigh Corfman revealed that when she was 14, she’d met Moore, then 32, in an incident that was followed, she says, by him picking her up and taking her to his home for a sexual encounter. Others came forward with their own stories about Moore.

Moore lost that run for Senate, despite an endorsement from Donald Trump, who was, in 2017, still the President of the United States, and whose endorsement remains rather powerful even after his ouster.

Then Moore met Sacha Baron Cohen, who was filming a comedy show for Showtime. Cohen mocked Moore with an interview that included the use of a ‘pedophile detector’ — a machine that beeped every time it was near the former judge.

Moore lost another bid for Senate in 2020, before he sued Cohen and Showtime, calling the interview, which had aired on Showtime, defamotory. As PBS reported at the time, the case was quickly dismissed, with the judge declaring the interview an obvious case of parody or, in his words, “clearly a joke.”

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Moore appealed, and on Thursday, he was given his answer — another loss for him.

According to Law & Crime, the case was given to three judges for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, who affirmed again that comedy is protected, and, separately, cited a release that Moore had signed, giving the show permission to air the interview, saying the document “bars Judge Moore’s claims for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud.”