Bill Cosby has been sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state jail for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his Philadelphia residence in 2004. He has been sentenced to “whole confinement,” a choose dominated on Tuesday.
Judge Steven O’Neill sentenced Cosby on Tuesday, 5 months after his conviction within the first celeb trial of the #MeToo period.
Ahead of the Tuesday sentencing, Judge O’Neill dominated that Cosby is a “sexually violent predator.” The classification signifies that Cosby should bear month-to-month counseling for the remainder of his life and report quarterly to authorities. His identify will seem on a sex-offender registry despatched to neighbors, colleges and victims.
When the ruling got here down, a girl in courtroom shot her fist into the air and whispered, “Yessss!”
The comedian as soon as generally known as America’s Dad for his position as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show was going through wherever from probation to 10 years in jail after being convicted in April.
Cosby’s legal professionals had requested for home arrest, saying 81-year-old Cosby — who’s legally blind — is simply too previous and helpless to do time in jail. Prosecutors requested for 5 to 10 years behind bars, saying the comedian might nonetheless be a menace to ladies.
Constand stated in a victim-impact statement submitted to the court docket and launched Tuesday that she has had to deal with years of hysteria and self-doubt which have left her “caught in a holding sample.”
Constand, 45, stated her coaching as knowledgeable basketball participant had led her to suppose she might deal with something, however “life as I knew it” ended on the night time she stated Cosby knocked her out with drugs and penetrated her together with his fingers as she lay almost paralyzed on a sofa.
Constand stated she now lives alone together with her two canine and has bother trusting folks. “When the sexual assault occurred, I used to be a younger girl brimming with confidence and searching ahead to a future vivid with prospects,” she wrote in her five-page assertion.
“Now, virtually 15 years later, I’m a middle-aged girl who’s been caught in a holding sample for many of her grownup life, unable to heal totally or to maneuver ahead.”
She additionally wrote: “We could by no means know the complete extent of his double life as a sexual predator however his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over.”
In the years since Constand first went to authorities in 2005, greater than 60 ladies have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, although none of these claims have led to prison prices.
Cosby was smiling and joking together with his spokesman and sheriff’s deputies as he settled into the courtroom Tuesday. On Day 1 of the sentencing, the comedian laughed at occasions because the psychologist for the state testified.
Cameras weren’t allowed within the courtroom; they’re typically banned in Pennsylvania.
The proceedings happened as one other extraordinary #MeToo drama continued to unfold on Capitol Hill, the place Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh faces allegations of sexual misconduct from greater than three a long time in the past.
Cosby grew to become the primary black actor to star in a primetime TV present, I Spy, in 1965. He remained a Hollywood A-lister for a lot of the subsequent half-century.
