Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis has been sentenced to 270 days in jail for assaulting women in his Bel Air mansion in 2011, The Hollywood Reporter confirms.
The sentence comes three months after the mogul called the jury that convicted him “retarded” in a widely-covered exclusive interview with THR.
PHOTOS: Girls Gone Wild Creator Joe Francis: ‘If I Wasn’t Me, I’d F—ing Hate Me’
Francis, 40, will also spend three years on probation and was ordered to complete an anger management course and undergo one year of psychological counseling.
Francis was convicted in May on three counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault causing great bodily injury and one count of dissuading a witness in connection with the incident. According to prosecutors, Francis brought three women to his home following a night out and refused to let them leave. He was also accused of attacking one of the women and bashing her head into his tile floor. (In court, Francis argued that there is no tile in his home.) His girlfriend, 25-year-old Wilhelmina model Abbey Wilson, was by his side for Tuesday’s sentencing.
In an explosive interview with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year, Francis lashed out at the jury that found him guilty.
“I want that jury to know that each and every one of you are mentally f—ing retarded and you should be euthanized because, as Darwin said, you have naturally selected yourself,” he told THR‘s Stephen Galloway. “You are the weakest members of the herd. Goodbye! And if that jury wants to convict me because I didn’t show up, which is the only reason why they did, then, you know, they should all be lined up and shot!”
Francis continued to slam the United States’ jury system as flawed.
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“The problem with the jury system is that anyone who’s not smart enough to come up with an excuse to get out of jury duty doesn’t get out,” he said. “Only the stupidest of the stupidest people end up on juries, you know? I’ve never met a smart person who’s done jury duty.”
Francis has been jailed in Florida and Nevada; successfully sued for defamation by Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn, to whom he now owes $20 million; indicted for tax evasion and filming underage girls; blamed for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of a company connected to Girls Gone Wild (which he said he no longer owns); and banned from entering GGW’s Santa Monica offices by bankruptcy trustee R. Todd Neilson, who filed suit to keep Francis off the premises.
Later, after THR‘s video of Francis’ comments garnered widespread coverage (including one of his jurors writing a post on Gawker), Francis thought better of his remarks, issuing a public apology to the jurors in his case.
“I deeply regret the remarks attributed to me in the interview with The Hollywood Reporter,” he said. “They were hurtful and do not reflect my true feelings. While I disagree with the jury’s verdict as I am completely innocent of the charges and intend to appeal, I was afforded a fair trial, and if I lose at the appellate level, I will reluctantly but fully accept the jury’s verdict.”
