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Cosby, 81, is due in Montgomery County Court of
Common Pleas on Monday to be sentenced by Judge Steven O'Neill
in the drugging and sexual assault of his one-time friend Andrea
Constand, a former Temple University administrator, in 2004.
A jury in Norristown, a suburb north of Cosby's hometown of
Philadelphia, found him guilty of three counts of aggravated
indecent assault in April.
More than 60 other women have accused Cosby of sexual assaults
dating back decades. Prosecutors asked this month to bring in an
unspecified number of them to testify at the hearing, despite
most of their accusations being too old to allow for criminal
charges. Constand's accusation was the only one to result in
prosecution.
Five other accusers, in addition to Constand, were allowed to
testify at his second trial. The first trial, at which only one
other accuser testified, resulted in a hung jury.
Cosby's lawyers opposed the request for additional accusers to
testify at the sentencing hearing. Judge O'Neill agreed, writing
in his order that in an "exhaustive review" of state case law he
found nothing allowing him to consider "uncharged conduct" at
the sentencing.
The order leaves open the possibility that prosecutors could
call some of the five women the judge had previously allowed to
testify at the April trial about their accusations. The judge
asked Kevin Steele, the county's district attorney, to clarify
his plans on this issue by Friday.
Cosby, who became known as "America's dad" as the star of his
"The Cosby Show" sitcom, faces a maximum sentence up to 10 years
in prison for each of the three counts, though sentencing
guidelines may lead the judge to a lesser sentence.
If sent to prison, he will be one of only a few state inmates
who are older than 80 or legally blind.
Crosby became the first celebrity convicted of a sex crime since
the emergence of the #MeToo movement last year, in which scores
of powerful men in entertainment and politics have been brought
down by accusations of sexual misconduct.
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen; Writing by Jonathan
Allen; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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