Justin Timberlake was arrested for driving while intoxicated in June. He refused the breathalyzer, but his drunk ass was driving on the wrong side of the road and he missed a stop sign. He was also visibly intoxicated, and the arresting officer could smell the liquor on him. After Justin spent one night in jail, he sobered up, hired a local lawyer and at least one clownish crisis manager. Whoever is running crisis management for Justin these days is doing a terrible job – they were trying to doxx the arresting officer, but everyone took the cop’s side. The crisis management team has also been running around, bribing people to publicly claim that Justin only had one drink and that he was definitely not drunk, not at all. Well, last Friday, Justin’s lawyer had several motions before the court:
Justin Timberlake will be arraigned next Friday on a misdemeanor charge of driving drunk in June in this waterfront village about 100 miles from New York City, and the pop singer will appear for the hearing virtually, by a remote link while he is on tour in Europe, a judge ruled on Friday. Sag Harbor Village Justice Carl Irace also agreed to review a motion by Timberlake’s attorney, Edward D. Burke Jr., to dismiss the case outright based on what Burke called a procedurally “defective” criminal complaint filed by the Sag Harbor Village Police officer who arrested Timberlake.
Burke said that the local police department failed to have a supervising officer sign off on the criminal complaint that detailed the “young” and “part-time” officer’s interactions with Timberlake. Irace said the arraignment will still go forward based on a revised criminal complaint filed earlier in July by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. A prosecutor, Ashley Cangro, said the paperwork issue raised by Burke has no bearing ”on the facts of the case.”
Timberlake has a concert scheduled for tonight in Krakow, Poland. Irace briefly paused the half-hour hearing so that Burke could find a workable court date next week for his client. “Find out what day — whoever you have to talk to — what day we can do a video arraignment with your client.”
Outside the red-brick municipal building housing the court, Burke told reporters, “The most important thing we have to say today is obviously that Justin should not have been arrested for driving while intoxicated. The police made a number of very significant errors in this case, and you heard the District Attorney try to fix one of those errors just this morning upstairs in court.”
Burke emphasized that his client respects law enforcement and the judiciary, but said that police officers, being human, sometimes “make mistakes.” He added that Timberlake “cooperated with the police officers from the second he was ordered out of his car to the second he was discharged on June 18th” by the same judge. “But the facts remain,” Burke added, “he was not intoxicated. I’ll say it again: Justin Timberlake was not intoxicated and we’re confident that charge — that criminal charge — will be dismissed.”
With no Breathalyzer analysis and – I’m assuming – no blood-alcohol test administered when he was arrested, is this a he-said/he-said situation? Not to get too CSI about it, but I would imagine the prosecution could get their hands on traffic video and security footage of Justin’s drunk ass driving down the wrong side of the road. They could even get eyewitness testimony about his behavior in the bar – I doubt Justin’s team managed to pay off everyone in the bar, you know? All of this because Justin doesn’t want to admit that he’s got substance abuse issues. Sigh. Meanwhile, TMZ is still getting briefings from Justin’s lawyer, and this is their latest story:
Justin Timberlake might have an ace in the hole to get his DWI case dismissed … and it’s a woman who took the keys to his car after his arrest … TMZ has learned. As we reported, Justin was busted for drunk driving last month, after partying with friends at a Sag Harbor hotel. Cops say they saw him blow a stop sign and swerve as he was following some friends.
After he was stopped, cops say he failed multiple sobriety field tests and also smelled of alcohol. He refused to blow into a Breathalyzer, and claimed he only drank one martini. Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … the car Justin was following came back to where the singer was pulled over. There was a woman and her husband in that car, and the woman got out and went up to one of the cops and began questioning him, asking, “Are you going to arrest Justin Timberlake?”
She then offered to drive Justin to their house, where he was going to spend the night … in other words, just let him go and she and her husband would get him home safely. That strategy did not work, and Justin was arrested.
Now here’s the twist. Our sources say the woman asked cops if she could take Justin’s rental car to her house, given that Justin was going to jail. The cops obliged, she got in Justin’s car and left. We’re told the woman had arrived at The American Hotel 2 hours before Justin and was drinking … and it was apparent she had been drinking. Yet the 2 cops who were on the scene let her take the wheel and drive away.
We’re told Justin’s lawyer, Edward Burke, Jr. — who is trying to get the case dismissed — will argue the 2 young cops were so off in their judgment, they let a person who had clearly been drinking drive away, right in front of their eyes. If they were unable to properly evaluate her, how could they properly evaluate him?
How many extra things happened around the DWI arrest of one washed-up pop star? While I’m no big-city lawyer, this story makes no sense as a “reason” why Timberlake’s case would be or could be dismissed. The argument of “that woman was drunker than Justin, therefore you must acquit” is bonkers. Justin is also clearly throwing a friend under the bus too?? Nothing quite like a has-been trying to save his own skin and avoid going to rehab.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.