McCready Sent Away for Year

Tennessee judge sentences troubled songbird to one year in county jail for violating probation over July assault and resisting arrest charges

By Gina Serpe Sep 14, 2007 8:02 PMTags

After years of singing the same old song, Mindy McCready's just been taken out of rotation.

A Nashville judge on Friday sentenced the arrest-prone songbird to one year in county jail for violating her probation earlier this summer via a domestic dispute at her mother's Florida residence.

"Your honor, I can honestly tell you this: This has been the longest two months of my life...not being able able to hold my son...has been excruciatingly painful," McCready, who has been holed up in jail since July 26, told Circuit Judge Jeff Bivins.

"I could only say I'm sorry. Please give me a chance to make things as right as they can possibly be."

But McCready's chances appear to be all used up.

Aside from the year behind bars, McCready was also sentenced to two more years of probation and ordered to perform 200 additional hours of community service. Should she again violate her probation or fail to complete her do-gooding, Bivins said, she will be sent back to jail.

McCready will receive credit for 75 days of time served.

The former country star had just over three months remaining on her original probation, stemming from a 2004 guilty plea to fraudulently obtaining OxyContin, when she was busted in July.

In the early morning hours of July 21, police in Fort Myers, Florida, responded to a call placed by McCready's mother, Gayle Melody Inge. Inge told the dispatcher that her 31-year-old daughter was intoxicated and causing a ruckus at the family home. When police arrived, they found Inge with a scratch on the side of her face.

McCready was rung up on charges of battery and resisting arrest. The "Guys Do It All the Time" singer proved herself a difficult capture, refusing to be cuffed, police said. (For her part, McCready claimed she was tackled by officers while holding her 16-month-old son. The singer also claimed that she suffered a broken nose and sustained bruising during her scuffle with the cops.)

McCready failed to ease up during the booking process at the local Lee County Jail, police said, and officers were forced to pepper spray the entertainer into submission.

She was eventually released on $1,000 bail, at which point she flew from Florida into Nashville, where she was taken into custody and booked at Williamson County Jail. She has been held in the facility without bail for her hat trick of violations: Not only did she break probation by getting arrested, but she failed to report the arrest to her probation officer and engaged in "assaultive behavior" throughout the encounter.

The jail sentence should keep McCready out of the blotter for a few months, which is something of rarity.

In addition to her 2004 conviction for prescription fraud, she was arrested in May 2005 on charges of drunken driving and driving on a suspended license, though only the latter charge stuck.

Shortly after the bust, her then boyfriend and father of her son, Billy McKnight, was arrested and charged with attempting to murder McCready after a domestic dispute reached alarming heights of brutality.

In August of the same year, the "Ten Thousand Angeles" singer, who has not released an album since 2002, was again arrested and held for 10 days after a warrant was issued in her name for parole violations. In her subsequent court appearance, McCready revealed she had attempted suicide after learning she was pregnant and had been hospitalized for an overdose of drugs and alcohol.

There's no word yet on who will care for 16-month-old Zander while McCready is locked up, though he has been under the guardianship of his grandmother, Inge, since his mother's incarceration.