Hip-hop star Chris Brown’s trial delayed to Wednesday
Chris Brown AP FILE PHOTO
WASHINGTON—A judge postponed the assault trial of R&B star Chris Brown until Wednesday after his bodyguard was convicted by a Washington court on related charges.
Brown, 24, appeared briefly Monday in District of Columbia Superior Court before his trial was pushed back two days so that lawyers could address issues over bodyguard Chris Hollosy’s testimony.
Hollosy was expected to testify on Brown’s behalf.
But Hollosy’s lawyers declined to allow him to testify because he plans to appeal, and prosecutors had yet to work out whether he would be granted immunity in the Brown case.
The two men were arrested on October 27 after a scuffle outside a trendy Washington hotel.
Prosecutors say Parker Adams, 20, from a Washington suburb, was punched in the nose by Brown and Hollosy when he tried to get a picture with Brown alongside two women.
Lawyers for the bodyguard had questioned Adams’s side of the story, citing a pending $3 million civil suit that he has filed against the two defendants.
Hollosy testified that he punched Adams after he tried to get on Brown’s tour bus.
A lawyer for Brown, Mark Geragos, said he supported the two-day delay but wanted the case tried this week to avoid having Brown “languish” in custody.
Brown, who took the Grammy award for best R&B album in 2012 with “F.A.M.E.”, was dressed in a blue suit and appeared calm and quiet in court.
He could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted in the Washington case.
Geragos suggested losing the bodyguard’s testimony would be a blow to Brown’s case.
“Hollosy says my client didn’t hit. Hollosy said ‘I hit him,'” Geragos told reporters.
“So if that isn’t crucial, I don’t know what is.”
Brown was sentenced to five years’ probation and community service, as well as domestic violence counseling, after he pleaded guilty to assaulting R&B diva Rihanna in February 2009.
Federal marshals brought him overland to Washington last week from Los Angeles, where on March 17 a federal judge remanded him in custody for allegedly breaching the terms of his probation in the Rihanna case.
He could face additional jail time in California for violating his probation.
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