FORMER world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has been sentenced to 24 hours in jail and community service after pleading guilty to drug possession and drink-driving.
Tyson, 41, who also received three years’ probation, had faced a lengthy spell behind bars after prosecutors demanded he be jailed for one year in connection with an incident outside a nightclub last December.
However, Tyson escaped with only one day behind bars after winning praise from Maricopa County Superior Court judge Helene Abrams for his enrolment in a rehabilitation program.
"Mr Tyson, I am very impressed with the letters I have received … probation is warranted," Judge Abrams told the boxer in the Arizona court.
Tyson spoke in a barely audible whisper during the proceedings, telling officials: "I would like to apologise for my actions."
Tyson was arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, on December 29 after nearly crashing his car into a police car as he left a bar.
Police found three bags of cocaine in his car during a roadside search. Tyson admitted using a mood stabiliser, marijuana and cocaine.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas warned earlier this year he would seek prison time for Tyson.
"He has run out of second chances, at least in my book," Mr Thomas said. "I believe some period of incarceration is necessary to help this man break his self-described addiction to cocaine and to protect the public."
Since his arrest, Tyson had undergone treatment at a California rehabilitation centre and worked with children, preaching a message of staying sober and keeping off drugs, his lawyer said.
Tyson had also passed 29 straight drug tests.
"If you do good deeds and you help other people recover, alternatives to imprisonment are the better route," lawyer David Chesnoff said outside court.
Tyson left the court without speaking to reporters. He will report to jail later tonight.
Tyson retired from boxing after he lost to unheralded Irishman Kevin McBride in June 2005.
Tyson (50-6, 44 KOs) squandered an estimated $US300 million ($335 million) in earnings and declared bankruptcy in 2003, and last year fought in a series of exhibition bouts in order to improve his finances.
His arrest in Arizona was the latest in a series of brushes with the law since he exploded onto the boxing scene in the mid-1980s, becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history in 1986, aged 20.
Considered unbeatable for the rest of the decade, Tyson’s career went off the rails when he suffered a shock upset to James "Buster" Douglas in 1990.
In 1992, Tyson was convicted of raping a beauty queen at a pageant in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was sentenced to six years in prison.
He was released in 1995, and although he regained two of his world titles in 1996, he was never to recapture the aura of invincibility he had once enjoyed.
He was knocked out by Evander Holyfield in 1996, and the following year was banned from boxing after he bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s ear during their rematch in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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