Rocker Courtney Love, making her second court appearance this week, pleaded innocent Friday to a charge of assault with a deadly weapon and said afterward she found her predicament “scary.”
The 40-year-old singer, widow of the late rock star Kurt Cobain, is accused of attacking another woman with a bottle and metal flashlight at the Los Angeles home of Love’s former boyfriend in April.
Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Dennis Mulcahy, who had issued an arrest warrant for Love last month when she missed her original arraignment date, set a preliminary hearing in the case for Oct. 7. He also signed an order barring Love from contacting or coming within 100 yards of her alleged victim, except through her lawyer.
Love, currently free on $150,000 bail, looked composed during the proceeding, answering the judge’s questions with a brief “yes” or “no.” But outside the courtroom in front of reporters, she appeared shaken and teary-eyed.
“I’m scared. It’s scary,” she said. “I just want to play music, and being in that court and having a judge say, ’the state of California, versus me,’ it’s just scary.”
Earlier this week Love appeared in a Beverly Hills court for a hearing on separate felony charges of illegal possession of prescription painkillers. A trial in that case has tentatively been set for Sept. 30, but her attorney has said he is trying to reach a plea deal with prosecutors.
In May, she pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to a misdemeanor count of being under the influence of cocaine and was sentenced last month in that case to an 18-month outpatient drug treatment program.
Love also has been charged in New York City with reckless endangerment in connection with a nightclub fracas in which police said she hurled a microphone stand into the audience.
Despite a wave of legal woes that forced her to scrub her summer concert tour, Love recently performed at a rock festival in Japan.
On July 9, Love’s 40th birthday, Mulcahy issued a bench warrant for her arrest when she failed to make the trip back to Los Angeles from New York for her arraignment in the assault case. Later that day, she was carted off, handcuffed on a stretcher, to a New York City hospital for what her lawyer described as a gynecological emergency.
She then spent most of the next two weeks undergoing drug treatment in a Connecticut hospital before returning to California.