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Bill Cosby’s legal team filed their first appeal after the 81-year-old “sexually violent predator” was sentenced to three to 10 years at the State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Pennsylvania last month.
Page Six reports that Montgomery County Court Judge Steven O’Neill, who’s responsible for sentencing Cosby, said “following an exhaustive review of the record” there is no basis to conduct a hearing based on the issues raised by the disgraced actor’s legal team.
Cosby’s counsel “argued that [Judge] O’Neill failed to properly consider factors such as Cosby’s advanced age and blindness” when sentencing their client on Sept. 25.
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While Cosby’s wife, Camille Cosby, was not present at her husband’s sentencing hearing, she’s made it clear that she thinks Judge Steven O’Neill’s decision to reject Cosby’s appeal was “unethical [and] unwarranted.”
She released a statement saying, “An unethical judge sentenced my husband to prison for a charge that the former DA determined was unwarranted and would never be prosecuted,” she wrote referring to former District Attorney Bruce Castor’s 2005 decision not to charge her husband after accuser Andrea Constand claimed Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted her the previous year (2004).
Mrs. Cosby’s statement continued, “That same judge has hidden the truth about his feud with Mr. Castor for years, most recently by denying my husband’s attempt to put Mr. Castor on the stand before sentencing,” reads the statement — which is addressed to “media outlets who published one-sided stories and/or who refused to give any coverage to our legal filings.”
Cosby’s legal team has 30 days to file a “direct appeal” to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.