Prosecutor asks 5 to 10 years in prison

NORR I STOW N, PA . » Declaring Bill Cosby doesn’t deserve a free pass because of his advanced age, prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to sentence the comedian to five to 10 years in prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, while the defense argued that he is too old and helpless to do time behind bars.

“What does an 81yearold man do in prison?” defense attorney Joseph Green asked on Day 1 of the sentencing hearing for Cosby, who is legally blind and dependent on others. “How does he fight off the people who are trying to extort him, or walk to the mess hall?”

Green suggested that Cosby receive something akin to house arrest.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said that he has no doubt Cosby would commit another such offense if given the opportunity, warning that the TV star seemingly gets a sexual thrill out of slipping women drugs and assaulting them.

“So to say that he’s too old to do that — to say that he should get a pass, because it’s taken this long to catch up to what he’s done?” Steele said, his voice rising. “What they’re asking for is a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

And he said the sentence should send a message.

“Despite bullying tactics, despite PR teams and other folks trying to change the optics, as one lawyer for the defense put it, the bottom line is that nobody’s above the law. Nobody,” the district attorney said.

Judge Steven O’Neill is expected to sentence Cosby on Tuesday. The TV star once could become the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison.

Cosby was convicted in April of violating former Temple University women’s basketball administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004.

The judge is also expected to decide whether to declare Cosby a “sexually violent predator,” which would make him subject to mandatory lifetime counseling and community notification of his whereabouts.

Cosby will be given the opportunity to speak before he is sentenced.