She said she had been humbled. But Foxy Brown’s regrets came too late for a judge, who yesterday sentenced Ms. Brown, the BlackBerry-wielding, hearing-impaired hip-hop performer, to a year in jail.
Foxy Brown
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Ms. Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand and whose show business name is an homage to the heroine of a blaxploitation film, came to court to defend herself against charges that she had violated the terms of the probation she had received for beating two Chelsea manicurists in a dispute over payment in 2004.
A Manhattan Criminal Court judge, Melissa C. Jackson, revoked her probation on Aug. 22 and sent her to Rikers Island after probation officials complained that she had left New York City without permission, had stopped going to anger management therapy and had been arrested in Brooklyn and New Jersey.
As the hearing began, Ms. Brown told Judge Jackson that the last two weeks in jail had not been easy. “I realize that that’s not where I want to be,” she said. “Being in jail, it’s humbled me in a way I never imagined.”
But the judge signaled that this time, she was not inclined to be lenient, saying, “Miss Marchand, it’s too little too late.”
Ms. Brown once enjoyed waltzing into court wearing designer clothes and telling reporters who had designed them.
Yesterday, she was allowed to change out of her prison clothes into a conservative gray pantsuit. But the effect was ruined by the heavy leather belt she was forced to wear that was attached to the shackles around her wrists.
Ms. Brown, whose lawyer said last month that she was pregnant, was, however, allowed to sit, facing a sign that commanded, “Defendant Stand Here.”
Russel J. Read, a police officer in Mahwah, N.J., testified that he had stopped Ms. Brown driving a gray Land Rover on Aug. 15 while talking on her cellphone, and then cataloged a long list of missteps. He said she made an illegal U-turn trying to evade him. She was driving with a suspended license and registration, he said.
The officer testified that Ms. Brown boasted that her father was the chief of an all-black law enforcement agency, that she was related to the hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, and that “she was going to have my job.” She also accused him of stopping her for D.W.B., or “driving while black,” he said.
Officer Read said Ms. Brown, who turned 29 on Thursday, had tried to conceal her identity by writing her name as Enga rather than Inga, and giving her date of birth as 1979 rather than 1978.
Officials also complained that Ms. Brown had moved from Brooklyn to a house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., without informing them. Ms. Brown’s new lawyer, Alan Stutman, argued that the house belonged to Ms. Brown’s mother and that in any case, New Jersey was part of the metropolitan area, and so, conceptually, still part of New York.
Ms. Brown’s court-ordered therapist, Carol L. Friedland, testified that the singer had stopped going to anger management sessions in June, even though she e-mailed three messages to Ms. Brown to remind her of the appointment. She said she used e-mail because Ms. Brown has a hearing impairment that sometimes made it hard to talk on the phone, but “she’s got that BlackBerry glued to her hip.”
Indeed, it was the BlackBerry that got Ms. Brown into trouble in Brooklyn. She was indicted there on a charge of felony assault, said Matilde Leo, a lawyer for the City Probation Department. She was accused of hitting a neighbor the face with a BlackBerry in July.
By the end of the hearing, Ms. Brown seemed, if anything, more contrite. “This is a wake-up call,” she told the judge.
But the judge was unmoved. “I will now sentence you to one year in jail,” Judge Jackson said. “I hope you learn from this. I hope you turn your life around, and that you never again have to stand in a court of law.”
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