Bill Cosby Sentenced To 3 to 10 Years

Bill Cosby led away to state prison

After a three-year legal battle more than a decade in the making, Bill Cosby was sentenced Tuesday to three to 10 years in prison for his 2004 sexual assault on Andrea Constand and was led in handcuffs from a Norristown courtroom – stripped of his freedom, his reputation, and even some of his clothing, according to philly.com.

As his lawyers unsuccessfully argued to keep him free on bail, the 81-year-old entertainer hurriedly removed his watch, suit jacket, and tie, and handed them to his lawyers and his publicist as sheriff's deputies waited to take him away.

That frenzied shedding of belongings captured in a moment his dramatic late-in-life transformation from a comedic icon and trailblazer for other black entertainers to a Hollywood pariah brought down by his own sense of sexual entitlement – one now faced with spending his final years behind bars labeled as a sexually violent predator.

"No one is above the law," Montgomery County Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill said as he announced the punishment. "No one should be treated differently or disproportionately because of who they are or because of wealth, celebrity, or even philanthropy."