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Panel finds Bill Cosby to be a ‘sexually violent predator’

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ASSOCIATED PRESS / APRIL 18, 2018 FILE PHOTO

Bill Cosby arrives for his sexual assault trial at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. The prosecutors who put Cosby away said they’re confident the conviction at his suburban Philadelphia sexual-assault retrial will stand.

A Pennsylvania state board has determined that Bill Cosby is a “sexually violent predator,” an assessment that could play a role in how severe a penalty the judge imposes on him when he is sentenced in September.

The determination was made by the state’s Sexual Offenders Assessment Board after a psychologist met, questioned and evaluated Cosby, who has been confined to his home in Montgomery County since being convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.

In a filing Tuesday, the Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, who prosecuted Cosby, asked the judge who had presided at the trial, Steven T. O’Neill, to schedule a hearing on the board’s finding. The hearing must be held before Cosby’s sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 24-25.

The judge will decide whether to uphold the board’s opinion after hearing arguments and witnesses from both sides, lawyers said.

Cosby, 81, faces up to 30 years in prison after being found guilty of assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004. The trial included testimony by five other women who said they believed Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them in prior decades. Prosecutors argued that Constand’s encounter was part of a long pattern of predatory behavior. Cosby was not charged with assaulting the other women.

If the judge agrees with the psychological assessment, and Cosby were not to receive a prison sentence, he would be required as a sexually violent predator to report monthly to the police for the rest of his life under Pennsylvania law. The law is the state’s version of Megan’s Law, a federal statute that requires the monitoring of convicted sex offenders.

Joseph P. McGettigan, a former prosecutor who is now in private practice, said there does not need to be convictions for multiple assaults for a defendant to be classified as a predator. Other evidence beyond the number of cases, such as the testimony of the five women who spoke against Cosby during the trial, could factor into the board’s decision.

“Information gathered by the Sexual Offenders Assessment Board that’s related to events other than conviction may be relevant,” he said.

Meghan Dade, executive director of the board, said it has recommended sexually violent predator designations for about 5,700 people since 2000. Of those, about 75 percent have been accepted by the courts, she said.

Alan Tauber, a criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, said that if the judge upholds the finding that Cosby is a sexually violent predator, it could influence sentencing.

“The judge will have heard all of this information about him, and will now have expert testimony that will show him to be more dangerous than the court might otherwise have thought,” Tauber said. “That could lead the judge to impose a longer sentence.”

But the judge is also likely to take Cosby’s advanced age and his legal blindness into account when imposing a sentence, and so he may conclude that the entertainer is unlikely to reoffend, Tauber said.

“He may technically meet the definition of sexually violent predator,” Tauber said, “but do I really believe that Bill Cosby presents a threat to people anymore? Probably not, as a practical matter.”

Andrew Wyatt, a spokesman for Cosby, declined to comment on the district attorney’s filing, saying only, “We will see you in court.”

But Joseph P. Green Jr., Cosby’s new attorney, argued in court papers that the psychologist who evaluated Cosby had made the finding on the basis of “irrelevant and improper” information, and without any cross-examination.

“The true facts establish that this defendant is not a sexually violent predator,” Green wrote.

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