Judge Orders Dave Chappelle’s Alleged Attacker to Jail-Based Mental Health Treatment
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The man charged with storming onstage and tackling comedian Dave Chappelle during his Netflix Is a Joke show at the Hollywood Bowl last May will be moved to a new jail dorm to receive mental health services as he awaits trial in his misdemeanor battery case, a judge ruled Tuesday.
A public defender requested the move for Isaiah Lee at a hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom that Lee, 23, did not attend.
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“He would remain in custody. It’s just putting him in different dorm inside the jail, so he has access to mental health and substance abuse classes,” L.A. County Public Defender Delilah Do said as she requested the move to a program called START.
“That is fine with the people, so long as he is not released to any program outside of jail,” Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Sharon Liang said.
“Oh, he will not be released,” Judge Armenui Ashvanian responded, making clear that she was keeping Lee’s bail at $30,000 while agreeing to order his move to the treatment program.
Ashvanian made it clear that she had been expecting the Tuesday hearing to take up a request from Lee’s defense team that he be allowed to settle his misdemeanor charges by entering a special out-of-custody mental health diversion program. That didn’t happen, and the judge set a follow-up hearing for October 3.
Asked by the court if Lee planned to ask for a diversion program at the next hearing, Do said she believed the next date would be a regular “pretrial” date. Do declined to comment after the hearing on whether the diversion request hit a snag.
“Pretrial will go October 3, and this is with no further continuances,” Judge Ashvanian told both sides before the hearing ended. “I do understand that the defendant has a pending felony, but we can’t drag this misdemeanor behind that felony for years, because we don’t know how long the attempted murder case will take. This case needs to either be settled or go to trial.”
Two weeks after the Hollywood Bowl incident, Lee, 23, was hit with separate felony charges alleging he stabbed a roommate at a transitional housing complex on December 2, 2021.
In terms of the Chappelle assault that was caught on video, Lee was charged with misdemeanor battery, misdemeanor possession of a deadly weapon with intent to assault, and two violations for jumping on stage and attacking Chappelle during his performance. If convicted as charged in the misdemeanor case only, he would face up to one and a half years in county jail and up to $4,000 in fines.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón took heat when he rejected felony charges in the case, but his office said the incident didn’t meet the threshold for felony prosecution because Lee’s alleged weapon — a replica gun housing a switchblade — was in the folded position the entire time and because Chappelle wasn’t injured.
Chappelle’s lawyer previously told Rolling Stone that the comedian wanted Gascón to reconsider and file felony charges for the onstage incident. “Mr. Chappelle wants this case charged as a felony,” Gabriel Colwell, a partner at Squire Patton Boggs, said. “Entertainers in Los Angeles need to know that the justice system will protect them on stage.”
Lee’s brother, Aaron Lee, previously told Rolling Stone that Lee has been in and out of homeless shelters in Los Angeles in recent years and has struggled with his mental health.
In a jailhouse interview with the New York Post, Lee reportedly said rushed the stage out of frustration with Chappelle’s jokes about the LGBTQ community and homelessness. “I wanted him to know that next time, he should consider first running his material by people it could affect,” he said, adding: “I identify as bisexual . . . and I wanted him to know what he said was triggering.”
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