Getting Chris Brown to DC trial cost more than $4K

By: 10 years ago

In this Jan. 8, 2014, file photo, singer Chris Brown, right, arrives at the District of Columbia Superior Court in Washington, for a status hearing in a case in which he’s accused of hitting a man outside a Washington hotel. He didn’t fly first class and his hotels weren’t five-star. Still, when Brown was moved from a Los Angeles jail to Washington for what was to have been the start of his trial on an assault charge, the cost to taxpayers was more than $4,000. The breakdown of the April trip was provided to The Associated Press as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. AP

WASHINGTON — He didn’t fly first class and his hotels weren’t five-star. Still, when singer Chris Brown was moved from a Los Angeles jail to Washington for what was to have been the start of his trial on an assault charge, the cost to taxpayers was more than $4,000.

The breakdown of the April trip was provided to The Associated Press as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The tab includes jail stays, airfare and other transportation costs. The U.S. Marshals Service, which transported Brown, said in a statement Tuesday that it uses the “safest and most cost-effective means to transport” inmates.

Brown is scheduled to be in a Washington courtroom today. This time, he’s out of jail, so he’ll be paying his own way.

Asked in April about transporting Brown across country, one of Brown’s lawyers, Mark Geragos, called the case possibly “the single most investigated, prosecuted and expensive misdemeanor prosecution in jurisprudence.”

Prosecutors wanted Brown in Washington to face trial on a charge of hitting a man outside the W hotel in October 2013. At the time, Brown was still on probation in California for a 2009 attack on the singer Rihanna, his then girlfriend.

When his trial was set to start in Washington, Brown was in a Los Angeles jail after being kicked out of a court-ordered rehab facility.

Records show Brown’s trip began April 1 when he was moved to a jail in San Bernardino County, about an hour east of Los Angeles. He spent two days there before being driven to catch a plane. The cost of transportation and lodging was about $1,000, records show.

From there, the Marshals Service group responsible for flying prisoners across country, sometimes called “Con Air,” took over and flew Brown to the D.C. area. That cost: $1,193. Three weeks of housing at the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, about two hours south of Washington, cost $55 a day, the jail said.

Ultimately, Brown’s trial was postponed and he only briefly appeared in a D.C. courtroom. Sending him back across the country on Con Air cost $1,071.