Bill Cosby Sentencing: Judge Orders Him To Serve 3 To 10 Years In State Prison

Disgraced actor and comedian Bill Cosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in state prison on Tuesday, Sept. 25 and is immediately being taken into custody. The Cosby Show alum will pay a fine of $25,000, pay the cost of prosecution and court costs, and will not be allowed to have contact with his former colleague Andrea Constand or her family members. 

The former TV star has been accused of sexual assault by more than 60 women, but he recently stood trial for the case involving Constand. Back in April, Bill was convicted and found guilty of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Constand in 2004, and he arrived at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, PA, located just outside of Philadelphia, on Monday, Sept. 24, to await his sentencing.

On Sept. 25, Judge Steven T. O’Neil upheld that Bill, 81, is a “sexually violent predator.” The label means Bill must appear on the sex offenders’ registry and undergo a lifetime of counseling.

The incident involving Constand took place in 2004, when the former Canadian national team basketball player worked with Bill on the Temple University faculty. In her testimony, Constand claimed that she had been friends with Bill for about a year and a half when Bill invited her to his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Andrea accepted the invitation, and once she arrived at his home, Constand said that Bill gave her “three blue pills” to help her with some recent changes that took place in her career as a staff employee on the women’s basketball team. “These will help you relax,” she recalled Bill saying in her testimony, according to The Slate. “Put ’em down, they’re your friends. They’ll take the edge off.”

Constand claimed Bill told her they were herbal supplements and Bill nodded, so she took them but she almost immediately started to feel sluggish. “I began to slur my words, and I also told Mr. Cosby that I had trouble seeing him, that I could see two of him,” Constand testified, according to a report from local paper Billy Penn. She then claimed Bill told her to relax and brought her to a couch. She says she lost consciousness and awoke to Bill sexually assaulting her.