Steven Feagin, Ex-Illinois Football Player, Gets 90 Years In Champaign Rape Case
Former University of Illinois football player Steven Feagin was sentenced to 90 years in prison Wednesday for the 1995 rape of a 22-year-old student in Urbana, Ill., near the university's campus.
Feagin, 42, received the maximum sentence by Champaign County Judge Thomas Difanis, who said he gave Feagin 90 years because of two other pending rape cases linked the former Fighting Illini running back.
In her victim impact statement, the now 39-year-old woman, identified only as a Chicago high school teacher, said she lives "in the kind of fear only victims know, and has manifested itself in so many ways.
"Daily things that I wouldn't have thought much about before have and still cause me anxiety and uncertainty and worry. Every unlocked window and every unlocked door. A car driving slowly past my house at night. Walking back to my car after a shopping trip," she said, according to the Associated Press.
Feagin, an ex-football player with the Fighting Illini and University of Illinois student from 1989 to 1994, was linked to the rape through DNA evidence. Semen collected from the scene of the rape was linked back to Feagin and helped seal his 1995 aggravates sexual assault conviction. A prosecution witnessed said there was a 1 in 1 quintillion chance that the semen did not belong to Feagin.
"Technology caught up with him. It was inevitable that this was going to be the result," said prosecutor Julia Rietz after the sentencing," according to the Rockford News-Gazette.
Other than saying he was sorry, Feagin did not say much during the sentencing, the AP reported.
The former Illinois running back is also facing two rape charges in Champaign County, committed in 1993 and 1995.
Those rapes along with the sexual assault Feagin was just sentenced for all have the same modus operandi, according to Rietz.
"Sneaking into these women's apartments at night when they were asleep, having them all tell him that they liked what he was doing to them, the fact that he was masked," she said, according to the Associated Press.
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