NEW YORK – Justin Timberlake is due in court Friday, where he is expected to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to his drunken driving arrest in the Hamptons a few months ago, according to a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney.
It’s not clear what misdemeanor that could be reduced to, or what fine, if any, might be at stake.
Timberlake had his license suspended because he refused to submit to a breathalyzer test at a traffic stop while in Sag Harbor in June. He previously pleaded not guilty to a drunken driving charge, and his attorney insisted in early August that he was not intoxicated.
At that hearing, the judge threatened Timberlake’s attorney, Ed Burke, with a gag order over comments he made outside court in late July about “very significant errors” in police paperwork.
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, described the paperwork problem as a “ministerial error” and that an amended charging document was filed July 2.
Timberlake had been charged with the misdemeanor on June 18 after police said he ran a stop sign and veered out of his lane in Sag Harbor, a former whaling town mentioned in Herman Melville’s classic novel “Moby-Dick” that sits in the middle of the Hamptons, about 100 miles east of New York City.
The boy band singer-turned-solo star and actor was driving a 2025 BMW around 12:30 a.m. when an officer pulled him over and determined he was intoxicated, according to a court document.
“His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, a strong odor of alcoholic beverage emanated from his breath, he was unable to divide attention, his speech was slower, his walk was unsteady, and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests,” court documents said.
Timberlake, 43, told the officer at the time that he had had a martini and was following friends home, according to the documents. After being arrested and taken to a police station in nearby East Hampton, he refused to take a breathalyzer test.
The 10-time Grammy winner began performing as a young member of the Disney Mouseketeer, rose to fame as part of the boy band NSYNC and embarked on a solo recording career in the early 2000s.
