Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison by a Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday, five months after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a former Temple University employee in his mansion in 2004.
The Montgomery County District Attorney confirmed the prison term on Twitter. The sentence includes a $25,000 fine and requires Cosby to pay for the cost of his prosecution.
According to the terms of the sentence, Cosby will serve a minimum of three years in prison and then become eligible for supervised release, although nothing promises his release at that time, reports Philadelphia public radio station WHYY.
The judge denied Cosby’s bail request, so he will be incarcerated immediately.
“It is time for justice in a court of law,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill said at the end of the sentencing hearing, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. “The day has come. The time has come.”
Cosby’s conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault came after his victim, Andrea Constand, said a man she had considered a mentor drugged her and sexually assaulted her in his home. During the trial, Constand and five other women testified that Cosby had engaged in a similar pattern of behavior.
Constand has described the abuse as traumatizing. “Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it,” she said in a statement for the court.
Cosby’s defense vigorously denied the accusations, as well as similar allegations made against him by more than 60 women. The sex that occurred between Cosby, now 81, and Constand, now 45, was consensual, he claimed through his attorneys, and a Montgomery County jury that first heard Constand’s allegation in 2017 failed to reach a verdict.
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