Archive for the ‘Rima Fakih’ Category

Miss USA 2010 title holder Rima Fakih has pleaded no contest to her drunk driving case in Michigan and was able to strike a plea deal with Michigan prosecutors.

Reports say 26-year-old Rima Fakih pleaded no contest to drunk driving while visually impaired, stemming from her arrest on December 3. In exchange, the prosecutors agreed to drop the more serious charge of operating while intoxicated.

“You learn, you pay your price for making mistakes and you move on. I’m very happy I can put this behind me,” Rima Fakih said outside the court.

A no contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing, which will take place May 9. The former Miss USA faces a maximum of 93 days in jail.

As previous reports have stated, Rima Fakih, the first Arab-American to win the title of Miss USA, was arrested in Detroit on December 3 due to drunk driving while visibly impaired. She was then apprehended by the police and was pulled over for speeding and weaving through traffic. Police officers found an open bottle of champagne behind the driver’s seat of Fakih’s 2011 Jaguar.

The beauty queen’s lawyer, W. Otis Culpepper, predicted that Rima Fakih would be sentenced to probation for her drunk driving case, which he said she could serve in California, where the 2010 Miss USA is pursuing opportunities in the entertainment industry. Fakih will “get back to California and get on with being a Hollywood kind of person,” Culpepper said.

Rima Fakih claimed she wasn’t drinking the night of her drunk driving arrest in December. However, two police breathalyser tests determined her blood alcohol content as more than twice the legal limit. One breath test put her blood alcohol content at 0.20 percent and another put it at 0.19 percent. The legal limit is .08 percent.