Scott Weiland pleaded guilty to domestic battery in Las Vegas Justice Court Wednesday and was ordered to attend 26 counseling sessions.
Judge Douglas Smith approved a plea bargain that will dismiss the case against the Stone Temple Pilots singer in six months if the counseling sessions are completed and there are no further incidents.
Weiland was arrested in November at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas for allegedly grabbing his wife’s arms and pushing her against the wall several times. Mary Weiland told police the incident began when the couple got into a verbal argument after she tried to keep him from refilling a prescription medication. The couple’s 18-month-old son was in the room at the time.
“It was a very defensible case, but it would have required my client’s wife to testify, and he didn’t want that,” Weiland’s attorney, David Chesnoff, said Thursday (December 20). “This resolution is good for Scott and good for the state of Nevada.”
Chesnoff said Weiland’s counseling sessions can be at his home in Los Angeles with a counselor of his choice.
After he was arrested early November 19, Weiland spent 12 hours in jail until he was released on $3,000 bail. Later that night he performed at the hotel’s live music venue, the Joint, with his bandmates. Weiland has a long history of legal troubles. In late 1999, he was sentenced to spend one year in Los Angeles County Jail’s Biscailuz Recovery Center after violating the probation he was serving for a 1997 arrest on heroin possession charges. The court found the singer to be in violation of that probation when he was treated for a heroin overdose in July 1999.
He was released from jail in January 2000 but remained in a supervised treatment program.
