Celebrity crime blotter: Justice is kind to Charlie Sheen, Justin Bieber, and Rip Torn
Lady Justice may seem implacably unimpressed by stardom of late, but today’s celebrity crime blotter is full of rich and famous people eluding punishment for their misdeeds, so perhaps the scales are finally tipping in their favor. First up, Charlie Sheen will not face charges for freaking out on porn star Capri Anderson, trashing his New York hotel room, and openly admitting to cops that he’d been on a coke bender—because who can fault him for his method approach to playing sleazy and dangerously unstable, the commitment to which merits his being television’s highest-paid actor?
Secondly, Justin Bieber will similarly not face assault charges for allegedly punching a 12-year-old boy in the face while playing laser tag in Richmond, British Columbia, an incident that briefly became part of the “It Gets Better” campaign once it was revealed the boy “hurled a homophobic slur” in Bieber’s direction, causing him to retaliate via video shaming on Ellen. Police have since concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the boy’s claim he'd been punched, implicitly backing up TMZ’s initial quote of a source saying that Bieber had simply swatted away the other boy’s hand and walked away. Thus concludes the least rock ’n’ roll story in the history of music.
Finally, actor Rip Torn pled guilty to reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, and the illegal carrying of a firearm after he got drunk and broke into a Connecticut bank while waving around a loaded revolver. He’s been given a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence and three years of probation, because he is not a rapper.