The Sacramento, California, district attorney's office ruled Tuesday (January 8) that there was insufficient evidence to pursue domestic-violence charges against Shins multi-instrumentalist Marty Crandall or his former girlfriend, Elyse Sewell. The
pair were arrested Friday after an alleged altercation at a Sacramento hotel during which Sewell claimed in a now-deleted post on her LiveJournal page that a drunken Crandall bruised her arms and bloodied her knuckles, and that she left bite marks on him as a result of their scuffle.
Sewell appeared in court Tuesday for her arraignment, during which a judge said the case against her had been rejected for insufficient evidence, according to Paul Durenberger, the supervisor of the domestic-violence unit in the district attorney's office. "Basically it means there was not enough evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and no way to prove a crime against either one of the people involved," he explained. "We looked at the police reports and there was no way to make a determination of a crime."
Sewell, a former "America's Next Top Model" contestant who dated Crandall for several years, wrote in her original post that a night of drinking in a hotel room ended with her escaping "from the room through a blitzkrieg of violence." After a hotel employee called police, both Sewell and Crandall were arrested and booked on domestic-violence charges. Sewell was released from jail Saturday and Crandall was released Sunday.
In a post titled "Bail Bond Betty" on her LiveJournal page dated at just after noon Tuesday, Sewell, pictured wearing a blue blouse and black skirt and standing outside a hotel room pouring M&M's into her purse, wrote, "Gettin' ready. I fancy my court appearance to be pretty fly despite puffy eyes and the giant jail boil on my chin that yesterday, in my anxiety, I picked into scabrous oblivion. Better pack some candy in case I end up in jail tonight and regret not grabbing my last chance for an M&M ... Soon I will find out whether I will be prosecuted or the district attorney will drop the felony charges. Ugh, how distasteful that I even have to think about those boring legal words. Out with 'own recognizance.' "
She updated the post later in the day, writing, "The DA has rejected the case against me. I am free. I wish the same outcome for Marty and have no intention of pursuing any further legal action. I would not wish entanglement in the widening gyre of the American legal system upon my worst enemy ... It was incredibly naive of me not to realize that my blog entry about this incident would become tabloid fodder. That was not my intention. I consider the small circle of people who frequent this LJ to be a support group; the much larger world of tabloid readers is certainly not. I will never speak of this again, nor malign Marty in this space. And tomorrow this'll be fishwrap ... Expect few updates to this journal in the next couple of weeks as I will be untangling the web of seven years of cohabitation with my ex-boyfriend, packing up my sh--, and thickening up a plot to travel and work in more temperate climes."
Durenberger said Crandall was still expected to be arraigned Wednesday as a procedural matter, at which point the charges against him will also be dropped.
This report is from MTV News.
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