DUI trial reset for Mötley Crüe rocker Vince Neil

By Dave Toplikar

Monday, Jan. 3, 2011 | 5:12 p.m.

Vince Neil will have some more time to prepare for his upcoming DUI trial in Las Vegas Justice Court.

The 49-year-old singer of Mötley Crüe was to have had his bench trial on a criminal drunken driving charge Thursday.

But a spokeswoman for the the Clark County District Attorney's office confirmed Monday the trial has been reset for 9 a.m. Jan. 26 before newly elected Justice of the Peace William Kephart.

Kephart, a former prosecutor for the district attorney's office, was elected last fall to his Department 6 seat. Kephart has been assigned DUI court cases, and Neil's trial has been switched over to his caseload. The Jan. 6 court date before Judge Eric Goodman was vacated.

Neil, who lives in Las Vegas, faces a speeding and a drunken driving charge from an incident last June after leaving the Las Vegas Hilton in his 2008 black Lamborghini.

A Metro Police officer stopped Neil about 11 p.m. June 27, 2010, for speeding and weaving between lanes on Desert Inn Road west of Paradise Road, near the Las Vegas Strip.

Neil told the officer that he had three glasses of champagne, but he didn't know when his last drink was.

The officer said Neil failed three standard drunken driving physical tests, which measure horizontal eye movement, the ability to walk and turn heel to toe, and the ability to stand on one leg for 30 seconds, he was given a breath test.

Neil's readings from the test were 0.215 and 0.216, compared to the legal limit of 0.08, the officer said. Neil was booked into jail and was released the next day on $2,000 bail.

The arrest was not Neil's first drunken driving case. In 1984, he crashed a sports car head-on into another car in Redondo Beach, Calif., killing his passenger, Nicholas Dingley, a 24-year-old drummer with the group Hanoi Rocks.

Neil, then 25, wasn't injured. As part of his plea deal, he agreed to pay two victims in the other car $2.5 million in restitution He was also sentenced to 30 days in jail, five years probation and 200 hours of community service.