During the scuffle, one of the officers dropped a baton. Carey, picked it up, which can be seen in the videos. She does not appear to hit or threaten anyone with it, lawyers argue, but she was quickly tackled by police. She was subsequently charged with resisting arrest and assault with a deadly weapon.
"Is possession of a baton an assault? No," a lawyer representing Carey stated at yesterday's hearing.
Carey has been imprisoned ever since her arrest in March, held on $1 million bail. On Wednesday, her bail was lowered to $50,000 after a judge called her prior bail amount “way too high.”
She is facing life in prison over the encounter, thanks to California’s three-strikes law. Carey has had, by all accounts, had a rough life, including going into prostitution at the age of only 14.
"The legal basis appears to me to be a distraction or cover-up of the killing of a man by the police,” her lawyer commented.
The judge has ordered that if Carey does make bail, she enter into a local rehab program. The founder of the program testified at a previous hearing that if she joined the program, "maybe, just maybe [Carey] would get the first break of her life."
