October 21, 2004
Courtney Love Enters Plea, and Nobody Else Gets Hurt
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
A subdued Courtney Love stood in a Manhattan court yesterday and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in a case that began during her rock concert at a Greenwich Village nightclub in March, when she pitched a microphone stand into a crowd, hitting one of her fans.
Ms. Love glided up to the courthouse in a black stretch limousine shortly after 10 a.m.
It was a quiet end to a noisy case. The charge, to which she pleaded guilty before Judge Melissa Jackson of Manhattan Criminal Court, was the legal equivalent of a traffic violation, and it replaced the more serious charges of assault and reckless endangerment, which carried up to a year in jail.
Ms. Love was arrested on March 18 after hitting the fan, Gregory Burgett, at a concert she was giving at Plaid, a club on East 13th Street. Earlier in the evening Ms. Love had also bared her breasts to David Letterman during a taping for his show.
As part of the sentence, Judge Jackson ordered Ms. Love to pay Mr. Burgett's medical bill, $2,236, keep out of trouble for one year and participate in a drug treatment program over the course of the year. She faces 15 days in jail if she fails to comply.
Ms. Love, 40, is known nearly as well for her public displays of bad behavior as for her top-selling music. Her band, Hole, broke up, but this year she released an album, "America's Sweetheart." She has been arrested in the past on charges that she has punched fans and cursed at flight attendants, and she still faces assault charges in California.
Her court appearance yesterday began on a sour note. Ms. Love, wearing a brown sheepskin coat and a purple velvet dress and accompanied by two bodyguards, was rebuffed by court security guards, who ordered her to stand in a long line of people waiting to pass through a metal detector at the main entrance. Hecklers called out to her as she walked back outside.
"The guy wants me to stand in line with everybody else," she said, smoking a cigarette and surrounded by a pack of reporters. "I'm not everybody else."
"It's scary standing in line with everybody else," she added. (A man who came with her stood for her.)
While waiting, Ms. Love said that she was still deciding what to say in court, considering the fact that, as her reasoning went, throwing around a microphone stand was not unusual behavior for a rock star and, in fact, was just part of an ordinary night of performing.
"It's the action of pleading," she said. "It just strikes me as a little un-American when you plead to something you didn't do."
In the end, however, she pleaded.
Slouching over the defendant's table, Ms. Love nodded when Judge Jackson asked if she understood the terms of the sentence. Ms. Love blurted out a question - what happens if she gets arrested again? - before Judge Jackson was able to tell her to ask her lawyer.
David Filer, an assistant district attorney on the case, said any new arrest would be assessed case by case.
With that, Ms. Love turned and left the court. And in an uncharacteristically quiet fashion, she kept to herself on other topics, ruling out one question with the tart reply, "Oh, dude, chill out."
As they exited the courthouse, Ms. Love's lawyer, Scott Tulman, appeared pleased.
"The case has been amicably resolved," he said. "Criminal charges are no longer an issue."
But Ms. Love was not as upbeat. She expressed frustration that drug rehabilitation was part of the sentence and said that she had not been under the influence of drugs when she performed in March.
In July, a Los Angeles judge sentenced Ms. Love to an 18-month drug treatment program after she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of being under the influence of cocaine when she tried to break into her ex-boyfriend's house last year.
"Me getting arrested at a rock show has nothing to do with drugs," she said. "That was where I got a little miffed."
"I don't think," she added, "it was much of a deal."
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