Since retiring from the National Football League in 2011, Darren Sharper drugged and raped multiple women across multiple states. On March 21, in a California courtroom, he admitted as much.
Now, thanks to a high-profile defense attorney, less-than-zealous federal prosecutors and an overtaxed criminal justice system, the former all-pro safety will walk free after spending less than nine years in prison.
Disturbing crimes
To fully appreciate the degree to which Sharper’s case makes a mockery of the U.S. criminal justice system, it is necessary begin by examining the allegations against the former football star.
The first of these allegations came to light on Jan. 14, 2014, when Sharper was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with two separate counts of sexual assault.
According to court documents, Sharper met two female victims at West Hollywood clubs in Oct. 2014 and Jan. 2014. He then invited the women to either his apartment or a hotel room, offered them alcohol spiked with drugs, and raped them when they lost consciousness.
Sharper has since admitted guilt to Los Angeles rapes in the form of no contest pleas. He also pleaded no contest to a similar rape in Arizona and over the next month, he will plead guilty to multiple rapes in both Louisiana and Nevada.
A backroom deal
Given the nature of Sharper’s crimes, one might expect that he would face a lengthy prison sentence, and indeed, he initially did.
In California alone, Sharper faced up to 33 years in prison, and in Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada, similar sentences could have been handed down to the former NFL star.
After months of negotiations between defense attorneys and federal prosecutors however, Sharper accepted, a plea deal that will allow him to spend less than nine years in prison in exchange for admitting guilt to his crimes.
In other words, a man that raped at least nine women across at least four states between the time of his 36th and 38th birthdays, will be free from prison at the tender age of 47.
Money buys leniency
In attempting to make sense of Sharper’s outrageously light sentence, it is helpful to begin by examining tangible effect his criminal defense team, which, in all likelihood, did not come cheap.
Leading the contingency of high-profile attorneys who represented Sharper was Los Angeles-based attorney Blair Berk, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1990 and has since represented numerous celebrities.
While it is impossible to quantify the effect that an attorney such as Berk can have on a case such as Sharper’s, studies published in numerous legal journals during the past decade consistently suggest that quality attorneys do make a difference.
Had Sharper been represented by a court-appointed attorney or a public defender, the likelihood that he would have been sentenced to nine years in prison for nine rapes would be next to nothing.
Partially because he was represented by one of California’s most accomplished advocates however, Sharper will most likely be walking free in less than a decade.
System is too soft
While it is easy to point at Sharper’s defense team as the reason behind his light sentence, a less than zealous federal prosecutors and an overtaxed U.S. criminal justice system are also to blame.
According to article published in The Wall Street Journal in 2012, 97 percent of federal cases involving criminal defendants end with plea bargains that offer defendants far lighter sentences than what would have faced had they been convicted.
Among the factors to contributing to the high percentage of plea deals is the fact that the U.S. criminal justice system, in its current state, does not receive enough funding to adequately prosecute its cases.
It has also been argued, and I would agree, based in part on my observations of prosecutorial practices in Montezuma County, that today’s prosecutors have become overly lenient. In doing so, such prosecutors have compromised the integrity of what is set up to be an adversarial justice system.
Injustice can be avoided
In the end, allowing high-priced defense attorneys to dominate our cash-strapped criminal justice system wrought with weak prosecutors leads to unjust sentences such as the one that Sharper received.
While I do not pretend to have all of the answers to solving our system’s problems, I am confident that more aggression from prosecutors and more money in the system would cure many ills.
Rather than turning a blind eye while serial rapists such as Sharper are slapped on the wrist, it is imperative that we sponsor a system that goes after criminals and puts them behind bars.
In doing so, we can ensure that the interests of justice will better served.