LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) A former University of Wyoming football player, who recently signed an NFL contract, had been accused of inappropriately touching two women while in college and was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail after pleading no contest to reduced charges.
Carl Granderson, 22, entered the plea to charges of sexual battery and unlawful contact, both misdemeanors, after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors. However, Judge Tori Kricken rejected the punishment of one year of unsupervised probation laid out in the deal after listening to emotional testimony from two students who say they were molested by Granderson as they slept at his apartment the night after Wyoming’s final game last year, the Laramie Boomerang reported .
Kricken said Granderson’s actions demonstrated ”very little sense of responsibility.”
The defensive end was led away in handcuffs at the end of the hearing.
Granderson had been scheduled to go on trial Monday for the original charge against him, third-degree sexual assault.
Becky Farley, a prosecutor for the Albany County Attorney’s Office, said the deal has been ”well put together and thought out.”
However, both women, identified in court by their initials, said they thought it was too lenient and that Granderson should have to plead guilty.
”I have never been so terrified in my life,” one said through tears. ”I sat there and looked for my keys because they had pepper spray on them, but they were nowhere to be found.”
The other said she was bullied by members of the football team who called her a ”ho” and a ”slut.”
Granderson, originally from Sacramento, California, was a two-time all-Mountain West selection and was widely considered to be Wyoming’s top draft prospect before he was charged in February. After that though, the university distanced itself from him. He went undrafted and later signed a free agent contract with the New Orleans Saints.
The Saints did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plea and sentence or his status with the team.
The first practice of the Saints’ training camp is July 26. If Granderson serves his full sentence, it would not be over until after the regular football season.
After being released from jail, Granderson must be on supervised probation for a year, which can be done in another state. The sexual battery plea does not require him to register as a sex offender in Wyoming.
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