NEW YORK — Plaxico Burress sat in the fifth row of seats in Room 1100 of the New York State Supreme Court building looking nervous. He fidgeted, he licked his lips. It was a few minutes before 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday and Burress had good reason to look so uncomfortable. As his lawyer would say later, there was no way out.
Burress, a former Giants wide receiver, pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, accepting the Manhattan district attorney’s offer of a two-year prison sentence rather than trying to beat New York’s strict gun laws in a trial.
He will be sentenced Sept. 22, when he will begin serving his jail term. The minimum time he’s facing is roughly 20 months, so he will probably be released in May 2011, when he will be 34 and out of the NFL for 2 1/2 seasons. He also has two years’ probation to follow.
“Unfortunately, there is no legal defense we can offer,” Ben Brafman, Burress’ lawyer, told the court in accepting the plea deal.
Burress, who caught the winning pass in Super Bowl XLII and signed a $35 million extension before the 2008 season, took a loaded gun, for which he had only an expired Florida license, into a midtown club late Nov. 28 and accidentally shot himself in the thigh, setting off the chain of events that led to Thursday’s plea. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau both took the uncharacteristic steps of publicly calling for jail time for Burress, who was released by the Giants in April.
“This was never a level playing field from Day One,” Brafman said. “In this case, being a celebrity hurt him. . . . If he were John Doe, he would have walked out of that club. Nobody at the hospital reported a gunshot wound. If he were irresponsible, if he were not a law-abiding citizen, he could have thrown that gun away.”
Hours after the court appearance, the NFL announced commissioner Roger Goodell had suspended Burress and said he is ineligible to sign with any team until he completes his jail term. Goodell said Burress will be reinstated upon completion of his sentence.
