The judge must have decided that D'Angelo had already been through enough.
The Voodoo purveyor was slapped with a fine and a suspended jail sentence Friday after pleading guilty in a Virginia court to driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license. The charges stemmed from the September 2005 single-car smashup that left the R&B crooner with serious injuries.
On the suspended-license charge, Powhatan General District Court Judge Paul Cella gave D'Angelo, whose real name is Michael Archer, nine days behind bars and a $1,000 fine, and then suspended all of it save $500. For the DUI, the singer got six months in jail and a $1,500 fine, all of which, again, was suspended, save $750. A reckless driving charge was dropped.
So, for the two misdemeanor counts combined, D'Angelo will have to shell out $1,250 and give up his driver's license for about 15 months.
D'Angelo and passenger Lynne Sellers, who had been scheduled to appear in court Friday but never showed, were motoring through Powhatan County in a Hummer when the SUV swerved off the road, hit a fence and flipped over. D'Angelo, who was driving, wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle, according to Virginia State Police.
The Richmond native was left with bruised ribs and contusions; Sellers suffered undisclosed injuries, as well.
D'Angelo's license was suspended in the first place in April 2005 after the two-time Grammy winner pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana possession after he was busted in January 2005 for DUI. After cops pulled him over, a routine search of his car turned up pot and 0.29 grams of cocaine.
For those infractions, D'Angelo was given a 90-day suspended jail sentence, fined $250 and had his license suspended for a year.
Shortly before his accident, he pleaded no contest to felony cocaine possession stemming from the same arrest and received a suspended three-year prison sentence.
While D'Angelo found major success in 2000 with the Grammy-winning Voodoo, the last new song from the oft-shirtless singer was the leaked track "Real Love," which hit the Internet in April. His next album, reportedly titled James River, has been in the works since at least 2005.