Ex-Georgia trooper gets prison in Macon child-sex sting
A 69-year-old Cochran man was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to answering a Craigslist ad in March for sex with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl.
Officials said James Ray Sapp, a former state trooper, arranged to meet the person at a Macon motel, but the intended victim was really a law enforcement officer in an online sting to ferret out sex offenders.
Testimony emerged at Sapp's sentencing in federal court in Macon that he had, in the 1970s, been a state trooper who had run for sheriff before running afoul of the law in Paulding County, northwest of Atlanta.
Records show that in 1985 Sapp was convicted there of aggravated sodomy, incest and five counts of statutory rape, crimes that happened in 1977 about the time he unsuccessfully ran for sheriff in the middle '70s. He was an 11-year veteran of the state patrol.
Prosecutors said Sapp, while free on bond at the time, fled west to Texas and disappeared to avoid prosecution.
Sapp, who apparently wasn't caught until 1985, said he ran to protect himself. Time behind bars, he said in court Thursday, for an ex-cop convicted of child-sex crimes would have been especially tough.
Speaking of the current charges and his actions to seek out a 14-year-old for sex in Macon, Sapp attributed it to "all this Internet action going on."
"I don't know how to describe it," Sapp said.
"It was more than just chatting," U.S. District Judge Leslie J. Abrams said.
Sapp said 95 percent of it, for him, "was a fantasy."
"I never meant to harm anyone -- especially a child," Sapp said.
He later added that a 10-year sentence "is probably a life sentence for me."
In sentencing Sapp, the judge spoke of Sapp's "terrible crime" and said exploiting children "is never acceptable."
To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397 or find him on Twitter@joekovacjr.
This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Ex-Georgia trooper gets prison in Macon child-sex sting ."