Cosby faces sentencing today
Disgraced comedian Bill Cosby will find out today whether he’s a “sexually violent predator” and if he’ll do prison time in Pennsylvania — while he continues to be unregistered as a sex offender in Massachusetts.
Cosby, 81, will be sentenced in Pennsylvania this morning on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, charges that carry a punishment of anywhere from probation to 30 years behind bars.
Cosby and his wife, Camille, have spent much of the past four decades living on their secluded, wooded estate along the Deerfield River in Shelburne Falls in western Massachusetts. The Herald has reported that Cosby’s conviction for these sex crimes is sufficient for Massachusetts authorities to require him to register here if he spends four days in one month or 14 days in a year in the Bay State. If he comes back here and fails to do so, he could face prosecution, officials say.
As of yesterday, Cosby was not listed on the state’s sex offender registry. He has been ordered to stay at his Philly home while awaiting sentencing and only leave to see a doctor or his lawyers as the case proceeded against him.
A jury in April found the “Fat Albert” and “The Cosby Show” star guilty of drugging and assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his home near Philadelphia in 2004.
Pennsylvania’s sex-offender board has examined Cosby and recommended he be deemed a “sexually violent predator,” concluding that he has a mental defect or personality disorder that makes him prone to criminal behavior. Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill will have the final say.
The stakes surrounding that designation are high given the lifetime counseling, community alerts and public shaming the designation would trigger. And it could become evidence in the defamation lawsuits filed against Cosby by accusers who say he branded them liars when he denied molesting them.
Cosby and his lawyers are expected to heatedly contest that designation, claiming it’s unconstitutional.
It’s unclear if the judge, in weighing the predator label, will consider the dozens of other Cosby accusers who have gone public or his deposition in the trial victim’s 2006 lawsuit, when Cosby acknowledged getting quaaludes to give women before sex and said he often gave young women alcohol but didn’t drink or take drugs himself because he liked to stay in control.