Ex-NFL player Darren Sharper gets 18 years for drugging, raping women
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Aug 19, 2016
The former National Football League safety of the Green Bay Packers, New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings apologized in court for "heinous decisions" that led to sexually assaulting nine women.
Sharper has plead guilty to raping women, or attempting to rape women, in four locales - New Orleans, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Tempe, Arizona - over a period of five months from August of 2013 to January of 2014.
Former NFL star Darren Sharper has been sentenced to 18 years in prison in a case where he was accused of drugging and raping as many as 16 women in four states. Sharper faced both state and federal charges in Louisiana.
Sentencing was originally slated for June, but Judge Jane Triche Milazzo rejected the nine-year prison sentence prosecutors recommended under the plea deal and doubled it.
There was also a former entertainment promoter who has pled guilty to sexually battering the two women Sharper admitted to raping and also having a part in the drugging scheme that saw women be plied with Ambien, Xanax, Valium, and ecstasy before the men took to raping their victims.
He said he made "heinous decisions", adding, "I'm still trying to figure out why I chose to make some of (those) choices".
Federal prosecutors had accepted a multistate plea agreement calling for a 9-year sentence.
Sharper's family left the courtroom without speaking to reporters.
The judge said he will be on three years' supervised release after he gets out of prison, including "sex treatment conditions" and registration as a sex offender.
Licciardi and a second co-defendant in New Orleans, Erik Nunez, will be sentenced on October 13.
She said she understands that people make mistakes. The charges involve nine women but the judge says there could have been as many as 16. They are still awaiting sentencing. The All-Pro safety helped the Saints win Super Bowl XLIV on February 7, 2010, which remains New Orleans' lone major sports championship.
Though he was arrested in Los Angeles on January 17, 2014, he has been jailed in St. Tammany Parish for more than a year.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon told the judge, "I don't think Mr". After his career ended, he was an analyst on the NFL Network until February 2014, when he was sacked after the charges in California and Louisiana were announced.
