Jim Brown Fails in Bid to Disqualify Judge

Football legend Jim Brown has failed to disqualify a judge who ordered him to enroll in domestic violence counseling--his sentence for smashing his wife’s car with a shovel in June.

During a brief hearing Tuesday in Hollywood Municipal Court, Brown was told that Orange County Superior Court Judge Kazuharu Makino was not granting his request to retroactively replace the original judge in the case, Gail S. Fischer, who sits in Hollywood.

Brown, 63, had accused Fischer of being a member of a “radical and extremist group of white upper-class women who target men of color.” Makino, in a ruling made last week but revealed Tuesday, said that Brown had failed to supply sufficient facts to warrant Fischer’s disqualification.

In September, a jury convicted the NFL Hall of Famer of misdemeanor vandalism, stemming from an argument Brown had with his wife, Monique Brown, 25, in their Hollywood Hills home. At the same time, Brown was acquitted on a second charge that he threatened to snap his wife’s neck.

Fischer sentenced Brown to three years probation, ordered him to undergo a year of counseling, demanded that he perform 400 hours of community service and stripped him of his driver’s license for a year.