Jim Brown Gets Probation, Fine for Vandalism

Former football star Jim Brown was spared jail time for smashing his wife’s car with a shovel, but a judge Tuesday ordered the Hall of Famer to serve three years’ probation, stripped him of his driver’s license for a year and required him to attend special counseling for domestic batterers.

Before a packed courtroom in Hollywood Municipal Court, Judge Dales S. Fischer said the trial showed that Brown, 63, required special counseling in dealing with anger toward his wife, Monique Brown, 25. “Mr. Brown needs to get into counseling as soon as possible,” Fischer said. “This was a very serious form of vandalism. He smashed a car three times with great force.”

Last month, a jury convicted Brown of misdemeanor vandalism--a charge that stemmed from an argument the couple had in June at their Hollywood Hills home. During the same trial, the former football player and actor was acquitted on a charge that he threatened to snap his wife’s neck.

Neither Jim nor Monique Brown attended Tuesday’s court session, at which he could have been sentenced to as much as six months in jail. But Brown’s lawyer, William Graysen, said his client is appealing the conviction and the sentence. Graysen argued in court that the judge should not impose domestic abuse penalties in a case that involved only vandalism.

The judge, however, disagreed. “It is certainly violence in a domestic setting,” she said. She denied Graysen’s request for a delay of the sentence and ordered Brown to appear in court Oct. 20 to prove that he has enrolled in the counseling program and met other conditions of his probation. Fischer added that it was unusual for her to hear of a defendant complaining about probation. “Usually, if someone protests probation, we just send them to jail,” she said.

In addition to probation and counseling, Fischer ordered Brown to pay $1,700 in fines to a battered woman’s shelter and a domestic abuse fund, plus $100 in restitution to his wife. The judge also required Brown to work 40 days for a Hollywood graffiti removal project and issued a modified protective order barring him from bothering anyone or using violence against them.

Brown, according to his lawyer, was unable to attend the sentencing because he was in Atlanta, visiting his oldest daughter and a day-care center she runs there. Graysen said Brown had planned to be at the sentencing Tuesday morning, but that he had missed his flight from Atlanta.