ODB Sentenced After Suicide Watch
The troubled Wu-Tang Clan rapper was sentenced Wednesday to two to four years in New York state prison, after pleading guilty in April to charges of cocaine and marijuana possession. He'll get credit for about 10 months' time already served; New York state Supreme Court Judge Joseph Grosso also asked corrections officials to decide whether ODB (real name: Russell Tyrone Jones) still needs psychiatric or drug treatment.
The punishment comes just a day after ODB's sentencing was postponed amid reports that the 32-year-old rapper tried to hurt himself at the psychiatric ward where he was being held. ODB--who wore a bandage on his right wrist when he appeared in a Queens courtroom Tuesday--was placed under suicide watch at Kings County Hospital until Wednesday's court date.
But the rapper's lawyer, Peter Frankel, says the wrist injury was accidental, and ODB is no longer under suicide watch. "As it turns out, we all came to the conclusion that that was unfounded...there was no evidence to suggest that there was any such [suicide] attempt," he says.
ODB was previously held at the Queens County House of Detention, after pleading guilty in April to criminal possession of a controlled substance. The case dates back to July 1999, when police found cocaine and marijuana in his car after pulling him over for running a red light.
But the rapper was moved to Kings County Hospital in early May, after staffers voiced concerns about his mental health--specifically, that he had become so depressed that it warranted medical supervision.
Currently, Frankel says, "I think he's much more resigned to the fact that this is a process he has to go through.
"When you consider the fact that he's been off the street for two years--already having spent a significant amount of time in treatment facilities--I think he's more than ready to put this behind him and move on with his life," he says.
ODB has asked to be sent to the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, which is located on the Wu-Tang Clan's home turf of Staten Island. But corrections officials are making no promises.
"I don't think being in jail is going to be the solution to the problem he's had for some time," Frankel says. "We would have liked to have him remain in a residential treatment facility, but that was not possible for a number of reasons."
The most notable reason, of course, is that ODB busted out of a Pasadena facility last October. He remained a fugitive for more than a month--even making a cameo at a Wu-Tang album-release party in New York--before finally getting nabbed by police at a Philadelphia McDonald's.
Wednesday's sentencing was just one in a long list of court dates ODB has faced over the years. Since 1987, the rapper has been shot, convicted a half-dozen times in New York on various charges, and busted for everything from wearing body armor (a no-no for felons in California) to threatening to kill a bouncer outside West Hollywood's House of Blues nightclub in 1998.
Still undecided, meanwhile, is whether a California judge will let ODB serve time for a probation violation in the Golden State at the same time he's in the slammer for the New York drug bust. Frankel hopes it will be just one less court date the rapper has to face.
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