Ex-Charger Duckworth Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Rape

Former San Diego Charger Bobby Ray Duckworth was sentenced to three years in state prison Thursday for the rape of a 29-year-old Carlsbad woman last year.

The 33-year-old ex-wide receiver had pleaded guilty to the rape in November after the district attorney’s office agreed to drop a second rape charge.

Duckworth, who played for the Chargers from 1982 to 1984, met the woman Sept. 2 at Gerico’s Bar and Grill in Carlsbad, where they struck up a conversation, according to detectives.

Duckworth lured the woman to his Carlsbad house later that night, where he raped and otherwise assaulted her.

After newspaper accounts of the rape were published, a second woman came forward accusing Duckworth of raping her in August. Those charges were dismissed for lack of evidence.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Tim Casserly had urged Superior Court Judge Ronald Prager to sentence Duckworth to six years in jail, the second lowest of three sentences administered for forcible rape.

“I am disappointed, but not outraged or really surprised,” Casserly said after the sentencing.

He cited the violent nature of the rape, which left the woman with severe bruises and a black eye.

“It was a rape far more aggravated than a normal rape,” Casserly said.

But in urging a jail term of three years, Duckworth’s attorney, Jan Ronis, argued that Duckworth “never had a hint of trouble in his life” and was unlikely to commit such a crime again, Ronis said in an interview.

“He was at a real low point in his life,” Ronis said. “His football career had ended. He was divorced from his wife. He’s unemployed, and he had turned to alcohol. I’m not excusing what he did, but he was under a lot of stress, and people do strange things under stress.”