LOS ANGELES, Aug. 30 -- Andre Young, better known as the rap musician-producer Dr. Dre, was sentenced Tuesday to eight months in jail after pleading no contest to drunken driving charges. Young's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit when he was arrested last January after leading police on a high-speed chase through Beverly Hills in his 1987 Ferrari. Young, 28, was sentenced in West Los Angeles Los Angeles Municipal Court by Judge Paula Mabrey. The drunken driving case marked Young's third conviction on a misdemeanor offense since 1991 and was also in violation of his probation from a 1993 battery conviction. Judge Mabrey gave Young the option of serving an eight-month term in the Los Angeles County jail with a possibility of early release after serving half the sentence, or five months with no chance of early release in a suburban city jail. Young did not make a decision Tuesday. He is scheduled to begin serving his sentence Jan. 10, exactly one year after he was arrested. Young was also fined $1,053, placed on four years summary probation and ordered to undergo a 90-day alcohol education program. Young's attorney, David Kenner, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Young was arrested in the early hours of the morning on Jan. 10, 1993, after leading Los Angeles authorities on a 90 mph chase through Beverly Hills and the Westwood area of Los Angeles. He was apprehended after skidding into a driveway on Wilshire Boulevard. Young failed a field sobriety test and was subsequently found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.16 -- twice the legal limit of 0.08.
In August 1991, Young pleaded no contest to charges he attacked MTV personality Dee Barnes. He was fined $2,350 and placed on two years probation. In June 1993, he pleaded no contest to battery charges stemming from an attack on a Woodland Hills man, who claimed Young broke his jaw. Young was given a 90-day jail sentence, ordered to make a $10,000 charitable donation and pay the victim restitution, an amount which has yet to determined pending a civil judgment. Young's legal troubles have not gotten in the way of his musical career. He was a founding member of the controversial rap group N.W.A., whose gritty stories of life in Southern California's ghettos influenced both rap and pop music in the late 1980s. N.W.A. also produced the rap stars Ice Cube and Eazy-E. After a much-publicized falling out with some members of the group, Young left N.W.A. and won critical praise for his production work for other artists. In 1992, he released the multi-platinum selling album 'The Chronic.' Last year, Young produced rap newcomer Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut album 'Doggy Style,' which has since become the best-selling rap album in history. But legal trouble has also dogged the 23-year-old Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus. Broadus is currently awaiting trial on murder charges.
