Ex-NFL star Darren Sharper indicted in New Orleans rapes, still jailed in L.A.

Darren Sharper, a one-time Super Bowl champion facing sexual assault charges in Los Angeles, was indicted in Louisiana this week on charges of sexual assault and plotting to distribute several anti-anxiety medications known to be used as date rape drugs.

Kenneth A. Polite, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said Sharper and former St. Bernard’s Deputy Sheriff Brandon Licciardi were indicted Friday on three counts of conspiring to distribute Alprazolam, Diazepam and Zolpidem with the intent to commit rape.

“As alleged, Sharper and Licciardi conspired to distribute narcotics to several women with the intent to commit rape. Licciardi further compromised his position as a law enforcement officer by encouraging a witness to lie about [his] involvement in this conspiracy,” Polite said in a statement.

Licciardi resigned from his position as a sheriff’s officer shortly before his arrest on Friday, Polite said in his statement.

One day earlier, Sharper, 39, Licciardi and another man, Erik Nunez, were indicted on a series of criminal charges connected to sexual assaults committed against two women in Louisiana in 2012 and 2013, according to court records released by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.

The indictments are the latest in a series of rape allegations levied at Sharper, a 13-year NFL veteran who was a member of the 2009 New Orleans Saints squad that won a Super Bowl title.

Sharper has been in jail in Los Angeles for most of this year. He was charged in February with drugging and assaulting two women he met in a West Hollywood club in January. An Arizona grand jury has also indicted him on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting three victims in Phoenix.

Sharper pleaded not guilty to the Los Angeles charges and had been freed on bail in February, but in April he was ordered held without bail in Los Angeles after New Orleans authorities obtained a warrant for his arrest.

The former New Orleans Saints star has also been accused of assaulting women in Las Vegas and Miami Beach, though charges have not been filed in those cases. Sharper has been accused of sexual assault by at least eight women.

Calls to Sharper’s Los Angeles-based attorney, Blair Berk, were not immediately returned. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans said it was not clear if, or when, Sharper would be extradited or where he would stand trial first.

Sharper retired from the NFL in 2010 and began working as an analyst with the NFL Network, but he was fired shortly after the rape allegations surfaced.

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