Scott Stapp: Battery Charges Dropped

By: Shannon Gossage

The charges were dropped after Stapp reportedly complied with the conditions the judge imposed on him including completing 12 hours of anger management counseling, undergoing substance abuse evaluation, and ridding himself of any and all weapons. Prosecutors dropped the battery charges Monday after determining that Stapp has cleaned up his act. Stapp has been on supervised release and was ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol. He was also ordered to submit to random drug testing.

Stapp was arrested on May 20 after he reportedly through a glass bottle at his wife of almost two years. Jaclyn Nesheiwat, Miss New York USA 2004, told the authorities that Stapp arrived at their Boca Raton home on the morning of the 20th after partying and doing drugs all night. She claimed that he became "enraged" when she asked where he had been and he threw a glass Orangina bottle at her only just missing her head. A sheriff’s spokesman said at the time of the arrest, "She was in fear at that point that he might do something else, so that’s when Palm Beach deputies were called to the scene."

Stapp was charged with aggravated assault, but the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor after a judge determined that Stapp was not using the bottle as a deadly weapon. Stapp entered a rehabilitation center in 2005 after a brawl in a Baltimore bar with a member of the band 311. In February 2006, mere hours after he and Nesheiwat were married, Stapp was arrested on charges of public intoxication at LAX. Nesheiwat gave birth to the couple’s first child, Milan Hayat Stapp, in January. Stapp has a son from his first marriage.