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A Pennsylvania judge deemed Bill Cosby a “sexually violent predator” Tuesday as he prepared to sentence the comedian for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman.
Judge Steven O’Neill is expected to sentence Cosby Tuesday in a Norristown, Pennsylvania, courtroom.
Cosby’s lawyers had pleaded with O’Neill Monday not to send the entertainer they described as an 81-year-old, infirmed blind man to prison. But Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele asked O’Neill to incarcerate Cosby with a maximum sentence, arguing Monday that saying “he’s too old to go to prison is a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“Nobody is above the law,” Steele said.
Cosby was convicted in April of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a former director of operations of women’s basketball at Cosby’s alma mater Temple University who once considered the comedian a mentor. The assault occurred in 2004 at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia home.
Constand told O’Neill Monday she wanted “justice as the court sees fit.”
In a written statement to O’Neill, which was released just before the judge ruled on Cosby’s status, Constand wrote, “Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others.”