The ex-wife of former NBA player Lorenzen Wright has pleaded guilty to helping facilitate his 2010 murder.
Between eight and 30 years in prison is what #SherraWright was given after she pleaded guilty in a Memphis court to first-degree murder, and facilitation to attempted murder on an earlier attempt to kill Wright, NBC News reports.
Prosecutors said Sherra plotted to kill her ex-husband in July 2010. Wright, who played ball professionally for 13 years, was found dead in the outskirts of Memphis, his body covered with bullet holes. Police discovered his body 10 days after he was reported missing by his mother.
Wright’s mother addressed Sherra in the courtroom, thanking her for raising her six grandchildren, who will be moving to Tennessee to live with her. “It’s OK to talk to grandma,” Marion told Wright. “We still love them. That is all I want is my grandkids. That’s it. I just hate what happened to my child. But he has some nice looking kids for his grandma. They want to see me, I want to see them.”
Sherra’s defense lawyer Juni Ganguli said if the case would have gone to trial, he would have had witnesses there to testify that Wright regularly abused Sherra and his kids physically for years, even after their divorce. “She feared that Mr. Wright would never leave her alone and she recruited Billy Turner to kill Mr. Wright because she was sick of getting beaten and that’s a very flawed battered woman syndrome defense,” Ganguli told reporters outside court.
As part of Sherra’s plea bargain, she will be eligible for parole in eight years. “There’ll be parole hearings,” prosecutor Paul Hagerman said. “That doesn’t mean that they’ll be granted. Marion said she plans to fight Wright’s parole in future hearings. “My son is serving life,” she said outside court.
The next hearing will be for Sherra’s co-defendant, #BillyTurner, who prosecutors say is a co-conspirator in the murder of Lorenzen Wright. “She had a role in the first-degree murder of Lorenzen Wright,” Hagerman said. “We still have a co-defendant pending. He has trial date in September.” Sherra and Turner met at church.
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