Bill Cosby has been sentenced to 3 to 10 years in a Pennsylvania state prison, a judge has ruled Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, a judge declared the 81-year-old comedian a “sexually violent predator” for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman over a decade ago.
Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill made the decision as he prepared to sentence Cosby for violating Temple University women’s basketball administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia estate in 2004.
The comic once known as America’s Dad faced anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison after being convicted in April in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.
Bill Cosby sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state prison.
— Montgomery County DA (@MontcopaDA) September 25, 2018
Bill Cosby’s sentence also included $25,000 fine and cost of prosecution.
— Montgomery County DA (@MontcopaDA) September 25, 2018
Prosecutors asked for five to 10 years in prison. The defense requested house arrest, saying Cosby is too old and helpless to do time behind bars. He is legally blind.
Cosby’s lawyers had fought the “sexually violent predator” designation, arguing that Pennsylvania’s sex-offender law remains unconstitutional and that he is no threat to the public at his age. But O’Neill said prosecutors had met their burden of proof by “clear and convincing” evidence.
When the ruling came down, a woman in courtroom shot her fist into the air and whispered, “Yessss!”
Meanwhile, Constand said in a statement submitted to the ocurt and released Tuesday that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt that have left her “stuck in a holding pattern.”
Constand, 45, said her training as a professional basketball player had led her to think she could handle anything, but “life as I knew it” ended on the night that Cosby knocked her out with pills and violated her.
Cosby became the first black actor to star in a prime-time TV show, “I Spy,” in 1965. He remained a Hollywood A-lister for much of the next half-century.
by Maryclaire Dale, Michael R. Sisak
