Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson was sentenced to a year in jail yesterday for assaulting two motorists after a traffic accident. The decision could lead to another sentence for violating parole in Indiana and places Tyson's boxing career in jeopardy.
Tyson "repeatedly acts compulsively and violently", Judge Stephen Johnson said after a three-hour hearing in Maryland yesterday. Johnson handed Tyson a two-year sentence but suspended one year.
The judge fined Tyson $5,000 and sentenced him to two years probation after his release from jail. Tyson was taken away in handcuffs after the sentence was pronounced. His wife, Monica, was in tears.
Indiana authorities must now decide whether the 32-year-old fighter violated his probation for a 1991 rape conviction. Tyson was released in 1995 after serving three years of a six-year sentence.
The sentence could also lead to a review of Tyson's boxing licence by the Nevada Athletic Commission, which reinstated the fighter in October after a one-year suspension for biting Evander Holyfield's ear in June 1997.
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