Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in a state prison on Tuesday for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in a remarkable endcap to the iconic comedian's fall from grace.
“This was a serious crime,” Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill said. “Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The day has come, the time has come.”
Cosby, convicted in April of aggravated indecent assault, declined to speak to the court prior to the sentence in Montgomery County court in Pennsylvania. His attorneys have filed an appeal in the case.
Prosecutors asked the judge on Monday to sentence Cosby to five to 10 years in state prison for the 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand, saying he had shown “no remorse” for his actions. However, Cosby’s defense attorney, Joseph P. Green, asked for a sentence of house arrest, citing Cosby’s advanced age and blindness.
The state sentencing guidelines indicate 22 to 36 months in prison, plus or minus 12 months because of aggravating or mitigating circumstances. However, judges are allowed to issue sentences beyond those guidelines.
In addition, O’Neill ruled that Bill Cosby will be classified as a “sexually violent predator,” a determination that requires lifetime registration, lifetime mandatory sex offender counselling with a treatment provider and notification to the community that a “sexually violent predator” lives in the area. It does not impact the length of the actual sentence.
Once a groundbreaking actor known as “America’s Dad,” Cosby was accused by dozens of women of drugging and sexually assaulting them over his decades as a powerful media figure. Cosby was convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, in the first high-profile celebrity criminal trial of the #MeToo era.
Several of Cosby’s victims arrived to court for the sentencing, including supermodel Janice Dickinson. She was one of five “prior bad acts” witnesses who testified at the criminal trial that Cosby had incapacitated and then assaulted them without their consent.
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors said that “extraordinary display of disrespect” was evidence of “who this convicted criminal defendant actually is.”
“He seemingly thinks that he hasn’t done anything wrong,” District Attorney Kevin Steele said in court. “The jury thinks otherwise.”
Green, Cosby’s attorney, asked for a sentence of house arrest and said that Cosby was not a danger to anyone.
“Eighty-one-year-old blind men who are not self-sufficient are not a danger, unless perhaps to themselves,” he said.
Though the three charges each carry a maximum possible sentence of 10 years, Judge O’Neill announced Monday that the charges had been merged into one because they all stem from the same event.
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