Bobby Brown spent just one day of his ninety-day sentence in the Norfolk County House of Correction in Massachusetts before being released. The troubled R&B singer cinched his early release by paying more than $60,000 he owed in child support to Stoughton native Kim Ward, the mother of two of his children.

Brown, 35, was just released from a DeKalb County, Georgia, prison on Monday, where he served sixty days for a probation violation. He headed to Massachusetts where he told Judge Paula Carey that he didn't have the money to make the payments, prompting the ninety-day sentence. Upon his release, Brown called the matter "a misunderstanding."

Brown's legal tangles aren't quite finished. He's due in a Fulton County, Georgia, court on May 5th to answer to charges of misdemeanor battery after he allegedly struck his wife, Whitney Houston, during a dispute at their home near Atlanta in December.

MARC W. DOLECH
(March 26, 2004)