Judge denies Bill Cosby’s appeal for new trial and reduced sentence

Bill Cosby has lost his bid for a reduced sentence and a new trial on charges he sexually assaulted Toronto woman Andrea Constand in 2004.

Montgomery County judge Steven T. O’Neill said that “following an exhaustive review of the record” he concluded that “no hearing or argument is required on the issues raised” by Cosby.

Prosecutors in Bill Cosby’s sex assault case called his bid for a new trial or sentencing hearing “meritless,” and asked the judge to deny him a post-trial hearing.

Cosby, 81, had asked for a do-over in the Pennsylvania sex assault case that ended with him being sent to prison last month to serve a three- to 10-year sentence. A jury found he had drugged and molested Constand at his suburban Philadelphia estate more than a decade ago. The judge declared him a “sexually violent predator” who remains a danger to the community.

READ MORE: Sarah Silverman says Louis C.K. previously masturbated in front of her with her consent

Defense lawyers later argued Judge O’Neill made mistakes during the trial and sentencing that invalidate the conviction and punishment. In a memo filed Friday, District Attorney Kevin Steele said Cosby’s objections are “time-worn” and have been rejected by the judge before.

Cosby called the sentence more than twice the minimum suggested in state guidelines, and complained he must admit the crime and undergo sex-offender therapy to have any real chance at parole in three years. Steele, in response, called parole “only a possibility,” and said the state parole board board was free to set the rules.

The defense also attacked the validity of a taped phone confrontation between the accuser’s mother and Cosby in early 2005. Cosby, in his post-trial motion, said the tape had been doctored. Prosecutors said it has long been clear the mother was struggling with the tape recorder and did not record the entire call.

READ MORE: Ryan Eggold on ‘New Amsterdam,’ health care and leaving ‘The Blacklist’

And the defense said the entertainer’s 2015 arrest may have come too late because it’s unclear when the encounter took place. But Steele noted that Cosby himself said in a deposition it occurred in 2004 — within the 12-year window to file charges.

Cosby, best known for playing the wise-cracking Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the top-ranked Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992, is imprisoned at a state prison in Collegeville, about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia.