Singer Fiona Apple Arrested at “Checkpoint of the Stars”
Sierra Blanca’s “Checkpoint of the Stars” has once again brought the Hudspeth County seat into the national spotlight. Grammy-award-winning musician Fiona Apple was arrested and jailed in Sierra Blanca last Wednesday, Sept. 19, after a drug-sniffing dog alerted Border Patrol agents to the presence of cannabis in the singer’s tour bus.
Apple, who was charged with possession of hashish and of marijuana, was held in the Hudspeth County jail from about 10 p.m. Sept. 19 until about 1:15 p.m. Sept. 20. She joins Willie Nelson, rapper Snoop Dogg and actor Armie Hammer on the list of celebrities busted for cannabis in the last two years at the Sierra Blanca checkpoint.
According to a statement from the Hudspeth County sheriff’s department, Apple’s Prevost tour bus approached the checkpoint at about 8 p.m. During a routine citizenship check, a drug dog alerted Border Patrol agents to the presence of “controlled substances” inside the bus. The agents found 0.01 pounds of hashish and 0.01 pounds of marijuana, or about 1.6 ounces of each substance, on the bus, the statement said. Though there were seven other individuals on the bus with her, Apple took responsibility for the drugs and was detained, while the other passengers were allowed to proceed.
“Fiona Apple Maggart freely admitted that the controlled substances belonged to her,” the statement said, “and she was placed under arrest by U.S. Border Patrol agents and detained.”
Apple was transported by Hudspeth deputies to the county jail in Sierra Blanca and was incarcerated there at about 10 p.m., Jail Administrator Mike Doyal said. The incident was apparently Apple’s first arrest, and Doyal said she was respectful, though a little shaken up when she learned she would be spending the night in jail.
Apple was released at about 1:15 p.m. the following the day, after posting a $10,000 surety bond and a $1,000 personal recognizance bond. There was some delay in setting Apple’s bond, Doyal said, as both Justice of the Peace Julie Sanchez and County Judge Becky Dean-Walker were away from Sierra Blanca. In the end, District Judge Kathleen Olivares, who was holding court in Sierra Blanca that day, set bond for the singer.
Fiona Apple, 35, whose full name is Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart, is a rock performer who scored a commercial and critical success with her debut album, Tidal, released in 1996; by October 2005, the album had sold 2.7 million copies, according to Nielsen figures. She received a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1998 for “Criminal,” a single from that debut album (and the title of which inspired numerous displays of cleverness in news coverage of the Sierra Blanca arrest). She has released three additional albums since Tidal. Apple is on tour to promote an album released this year, and she was en route to perform at the Austin City Limits stage at the time of her arrest.
Possession of marijuana in an amount of less than 4 ounces is, under Texas law, a misdemeanor, and Apple might have been cited and released had possession of marijuana been the only allegation. However, while many states treat the possession of hashish as they do marijuana, in Texas possession of any amount of hashish is a felony. Figures provided in the sheriff’s department press release suggest Apple could face state jail felony charges for hashish possession, which can carry a punishment of up to two years’ imprisonment.
Doyal said he and his staff made every effort to process Apple quickly and send her on her way, in hopes of avoiding a “circus” of media attention. Those efforts did not, however, prevent a small storm of media coverage in the week following the incident.
While her Austin City Limits show was postponed, Apple did take the stage Friday (Sept. 21) for the next date on her tour, at the Bayou Music Center in Houston, and she spoke during the concert about her overnight stay in the Hudspeth County jail.
Apple said that “most of the people (at the jail) were very nice,” and she referred to “the guy who runs the jail” – Doyal, apparently – as a “real decent guy.” She apologized to him for being “attitude-y,” saying that she hadn’t trusted him initially but did by the end of her stay. But she accused four other individuals at the jail of acting in an “inappropriate and probably illegal” way; without offering any details, she said she had been taunted and “laughed at all night long.” Apple said she had written down the names of those individuals and had then torn up the paper, but not before she had “encoded” the information. She said she would hold that information secret, unless any of the individuals were “interested in being a celebrity.”
Media coverage roiled again on Monday (Sept. 24), after Rusty Fleming, public information officer for the Hudspeth County sheriff’s department, sent out a statement responding to Apple’s comments. In a portion of the statement expressing the “official position” of the sheriff’s office, Fleming said that if Apple had a legal complaint regarding her treatment at the jail, she should communicate that to the Texas attorney general’s office, and that if she had an ethical complaint against a jailer or deputy, she should report the complaint to the sheriff’s department’s internal affairs division.
However, Fleming appended a “personal” response to Apple with the press release, and it was this portion of the release that fueled the media fire. In his statement, Fleming suggested Apple should “just shut-up and sing” and referred to her as “honey” and “sweetie,” adding that he was “already more famous” than she was. In press coverage, Fleming’s comments were widely portrayed as representing the sheriff’s department itself.
The Sierra Blanca Border Patrol checkpoint routinely generates a dozen criminal cases or more each day, the majority of which are misdemeanor marijuana cases involving U.S. citizens. U.S. residents who do not live near the southern border generally do not anticipate passing through an immigration checkpoint while moving from one point to another within their own country, and Apple and her companions may have shared that understandable misperception. Though, by now, one would think the word on the Sierra Blanca checkpoint should be getting out.
3 Comments
Why Rusty Fleming Thinks He Is More Famous than Fiona Apple « The Aerostat
[…] made national headlines with an odd response to singer Fiona Apple’s statement regarding her arrest on September 19 at the Sierra Blanca Border Patrol checkpoint in Far West Texas for possession of .01 grams each of […]
Something Unpleasant Happened to Fiona Apple in the Hudspeth County Jail « The Aerostat
[…] that she uses to protect the secrets that she learned inside the Hudspeth County Jail. She was arrested on September 19 for possession of hash and weed at the Sierra Blanca Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 in […]