Bill Cosby faces 5-10 years in jail for sexual assault

New York: Comedian Bill Cosby, who was earlier facing up to 30 years behind bars, will now face a maximum of 10 years after his three counts of his conviction were merged into one.

Prosecutors asked a US court on Monday to sentence Cosby to 5-10 years for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, saying he had shown "no remorse" for his actions, CNN reported.

"This is about a person who put himself in a situation of being a mentor, but we know he had other intentions just from the beginning," District Attorney Kevin Steele said on the first day of a hearing that would determine how severely the disgraced actor should be punished. 

"We know that from the statements he made. What he saw in Andrea the first time he laid eyes on her. What his plan was. To get to the point they were going to get to. And that didn't involve consent."

Cosby, the first high-profile American celebrity to be convicted in the #MeToo era, should be locked up for as long as a decade and be required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life, prosecutors said.

However, Cosby's defence attorney, Joseph P. Green, asked for a sentence of house arrest, citing Cosby's advanced age and blindness.

"Cosby is not dangerous," he said. "Eighty-one-year-old blind men who are not self-sufficient are not a danger, unless perhaps to themselves."

The sentence was expected to come on Tuesday after Judge Steven T. O'Neill decides whether Cosby should be required to register himself with state police and submit to sex-offender counselling and notification for life.

Cosby was convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and assaulting Constand at his home in 2004.

Judge O'Neill announced that the charges had been merged into one because they all stem from the same event. 

Monday's hearing also featured victim impact statements from Constand, her parents and her sister. 

A prosecution expert said Cosby should be labelled a "sexually violent predator" because he has a mental disorder that involves urges toward non-consenting women.

Cosby has declined to participate in any evaluation on his mental state to decide whether he was sexually violent predator.