Jailed former NFL star Darren Sharper admits to drugging, raping three women
Jailed former NFL star Darren Sharper admits to drugging, raping three women
Former NFL player Darren Sharper pleaded guilty on Monday to drugging and raping three woman in New Orleans.
The plea is the last piece of a ‘global’ resolution to resolve Sharper’s criminal charges without requiring trials in four separate states after he pleaded guilty or no contest in March to raping six other woman in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Tempe, Arizona.
Sharper, who has been in jail since February 2014 after he was arrested for rape charges in Los Angeles, will remain in prison for at least nine years under the plea deal.
He will then be tracked with a GPS for three to five years by California parole officers before beginning a lifetime probation term that will be administered in Arizona, according to the New Orleans Advocate.
Under his parole and probation agreements, once Sharper, 39, gets out of jail he will never be allowed to drink alcohol, go to bars or liquor stores, visit a sex shop or find a date online, among other restrictions.
If he violates any of the terms, Sharper would be forced to serve at least another 14 years in prison before returning to the same strict conditions outside of cell walls.
As part of his global deal, Sharper has also agreed to share with investigators information he has about his co-defendants, Erik Nunez and Brandon Licciardio, who have both pleaded not guilty to rape and drugging charges in Louisiana.
Licciardi was with Sharper on both nights that the NFL player admits he raped three woman.
On August 31, 2013 Sharper and Licciardi hung out at a club with a woman Licciardi had met on Facebook and had previously had consensual sex with earlier that day, prosecutors said.
Sharper later brought the woman to a hotel room he and Licciardi had booked for the night that was across the street from his luxury condo and raped her, the New Orleans Advocate reported.
Less than a month later, Sharper, Licciardi and Nunez were at a nightclub with two women, who Sharper would later admit would be drugged with Ambien and Ecstasy in their drinks before he raped them at his condo.
Nunez is also charged with raping both women.
Evidence also suggests that Sharper sent Licciardi, who is not accused of raping any of the same woman as Sharper, a video of one of his victims naked and passed out in his condo.
Licciardi has been charged with raping a woman in Sharper’s condo after he and the NFL player allegedly slipped Ecstasy, Xanax and Valium into her drink at a pre-Super Bowl party in 2013.
Nunez and Licciardi have been behind bars since December.
By pleading guilty, Sharper technically agreed to accept a 20 year prison.
But if he doesn’t violate the terms of his probation, the time he served in federal prison, as well as his parole in California and probation in Arizona will count against that time.
Sharper, who retired from the NFL in 2010 after playing for the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints for fourteen seasons, is scheduled to be sentenced on August 21.
