Former Green Bay Packers star Darren Sharper has taken the first of numerous steps to fess up to sexual crimes in four states that will send him to prison for around nine years, eliminating any doubt that he drugged and raped women.
Sharper entered guilty pleas to charges of sexual assault in Arizona and no contest in California on Monday, after using a strong sedative combined with alcohol to knock unconscious two women. He has a video conference hearing in Nevada on Tuesday, and in the upcoming month, he will appear in court in New Orleans.
He is charged with drugging and sexually abusing women in every state when the victims were either unconscious or
The pleas were made as Los Angeles prosecutors readied themselves to offer proof of Sharper’s decline from prominence as a former All-Pro safety who was part of the New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl winning team. His pristine reputation suffered when women started coming to police in many places with similar accounts of how they had blacked out while drinking with him and woke up half asleep only to discover they had been sexually assaulted.
Defense attorneys had previously claimed that the sex was consensual. According to one attorney, Sharper did not mix the beverages.
However, Sharper, 39, offered no resistance on Monday in court. He stated that it was in his best interest to enter the pleas while sporting a light blue suit with stripes.
He admitted to raping two women he drugged after meeting them at a West Hollywood club by not contesting the incapable of providing permission or resistance. California allegations. The pleads have the same legal impact as a win.
Both encounters were eerily similar. In October 2013, Sharper invited a woman and her friend to go to a party but stopped on the way to get something at his Century City hotel and invited them upstairs. He insisted they drink a shot, and they blacked out. One woman awoke to Sharper sexually assaulting her.
The women were not in court, but prosecutors said they had agreed to the plea. Under the unusual deal negotiated by Sharper’s lawyers and state and federal prosecutors, Sharper will serve sentences concurrently in federal prison, though the full term has not yet been announced. He was sentenced to nine years in the Arizona case and will face 20 years in the California case when sentenced July 15. However, because the crimes in California only require serving half the term and he gets credit for 13 months spent in jail, he’ll serve about nine more years, lawyers said. The sentence is no slap on the wrist, but it spares Sharper a potentially longer term if sentences involving at least nine alleged victims were added together
