The three-year courtroom battle over the assault on Andrea Constand by Bill Cosby in 2004 has finally ended. Cosby, now 81, was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison on Tuesday.
"It is time for justice in a court of law," Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill said at the end og the hearing. "The day has come. The time has come."
Defense lawyers cited Cosby's blindness, advanced age and declining health to try and get the judge to agree on a house arrest sentence but O'Neill denied any requests made by the lawyers and ordered he be taken away immediately to prison as well as pay a $25,000 fine and repay the cost of his prosecution.
"This is a serious crime," O'Neill said. "The nature of this crime indicates that he could quite possibly be a danger to the community."
Constand, who was present in the courtroom for the two-day hearing, was just one of the victims from the entertainer's serial raping that began over 14 years ago. During the hearing, she provided her own account of the assault where Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his mansion and described her attempt to bring charges in 2005.
"We may never know the extent of his double life as a sexual predator," Constand wrote in her statement, "but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over."
Cosby has continuously denied ever assaulting Constand or any other women.
Cosby will be evaluated for a permanent placement within the state prison system in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
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