Brody Dalle from The Distillers performs live on Saturday, May 5th, 2018, in Atlanta.
Paul R. Giunta/Invision/AP
Brody Dalle was found guilty Friday of criminal contempt. “failing”To hand over her youngest son, Josh Homme, frontman of Queens of the Stone Age to her ex-husband for his custodial time.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff found Dalle guilty “willfully” violating a Sept. 1 court order when she didn’t deliver the 5-year-old child to Homme on Sept. 3. But in a split ruling, he acquitted Dalle of a similar count related to the couple’s older 10-year son, saying he believed the older boy resisted the visit on his own. Dalle was also cleared of two other counts, alleging that she had deprived Homme access to video calls.
Judge Riff set sentencing for Dalle’s misdemeanor conviction, which could carry jail time, for Nov. 30.
Homme asked for a speech after the verdict. “I followed every single order you gave. Why did I do that?”He asked Judge Riff.
“I know how disappointed you are, and I know you think this system has let you down,” Riff responded, referring to the fact Homme hasn’t had custody time with his eldest son since August.
“Everybody here has gotten a serious tutorial in criminal law. Criminal law is not the answer to a family’s problems,”Riff said. “What you really need to be focusing on is how in this current fractured environment you’ll be able to co-parent. And you’re going to need help. You’re going to need third parties involved. If you can get there, you’re going to heal this family. But doing it through contempt proceedings and DV [domestic violence restraining order] proceedings probably is not the answer.”
Both parents took the witness stand during the contentious trial that started Oct. 29 at Homme’s request.
“To pretend we’re dealing with anything other than willful conduct is a joke,” Homme’s lawyer Glen Jonas said in his closing argument Friday, calling the children “pawns in mother’s game of vindictive parental alienation.”
In his own testimony and sworn statements, Homme conceded his relationship with the ex-couple’s 15-year-old daughter had broken down — she was granted a restraining order against him Sept. 7 — but he claimed his custodial time with his sons over the summer was generally positive and he didn’t believe the boys heard him disparage Dalle to her face at a prior handoff, as Dalle has claimed.
Dalle, for her part, testified that she tried unsuccessfully to get the boys to see their father. Dalle said she unblocked Homme’s phone number in the children’s phone, packed their bags for the visits and even told them she might go to jail if they didn’t go see their dad.
Dalle’s lawyer Lisa Helfend-Meyer claimed in her closing argument that Homme alone was responsible for his estrangement from his kids. She claimed that Homme was the one responsible. “emotional mind games” with the children when he allegedly punched Dalle’s car, called her names and allegedly threatened to kill her boyfriend.
The contempt trial marked the latest turn in the ex-couple’s turbulent split. In prior hearings in the case, Riff ordered round-the-clock, court-appointed monitors in each parent’s home during custody visits. He also dismissed petitions for restraining order filed on behalf the boys in September 8.
Though the boys’ paperwork included what looked like Dalle’s signature, she revealed during the trial that she did not sign the paperwork and was not even present when the petitions were filed in a courthouse in Santa Monica without the boys present.
“I had nothing to do with it,”Nov. 9, Dalle stated that Gunner Foxx was her boyfriend and drove her teen daughter to courthouse to file paperwork.