A man once briefly married to Britney Spears who showed up uninvited at the pop star’s wedding to long-time boyfriend Sam Asghari was charged on Monday with felony stalking.
Jason Alexander, 40, pleaded not guilty in Ventura County court to the charge, along with misdemeanour counts of trespassing, vandalism and battery.
The three misdemeanour charges stemmed directly from Alexander’s attempt to get into the wedding, which he live-streamed on Instagram. The stalking charge involved repeated incidents over time, Spears attorney Mathew Rosengart said.
“He’s going to — I hope, and I pledged my support — be very vigorously prosecuted,” Rosengart said outside the hearing. “It’s a very serious matter. This was more than just a quote ‘wedding crash’. This was an intrusion.”
A judge issued a restraining order requiring Alexander, who appeared in court via video conference from jail, to stay at least 100 yards (90 metres) from Spears for three years. The judge set bail at $100,000 and scheduled a hearing for the issue on Wednesday.
An email seeking comment from his public defender Matthew Terry was not immediately returned.
Alexander was Spears’s first husband. The two were married for less than three days in 2004 before an annulment.
Spears, 40, and her Iranian husband Asghari, 28, were married on Thursday at her home in Thousand Oaks, California, in front of several dozen guests including Selena Gomez, Drew Barrymore, Paris Hilton and Madonna.
Alexander, who was a childhood friend of Spears, was streaming live on Instagram when he approached the house. He appeared in a mostly empty but decorated room, telling security Spears had invited him.
Deputies responding to a trespassing call detained him, and he was arrested when they learnt he had a warrant for his arrest in another county, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said.
Spears was previously married from 2004 to 2007 to Kevin Federline, with whom she has two sons, aged 15 and 16.
She met Asghari in 2016 on the set of the video for her song Slumber Party.
Their wedding came nine months after Spears and Asghari were engaged, and nearly seven months after Spears won her freedom from a court conservatorship that controlled her life and affairs for more than 12 years.
Spears posted about the nuptials on her Instagram and Twitter accounts the next day.
“WE DID IT !!! WE GOT MARRIED !!! Gggggeeeeezzzzz !!! It was the most spectacular day !!!” Spears said in the posts along with a picture of her and Asghari from the wedding. “The ceremony was a dream and the party was even better !!!”
Scroll through gallery below to see Britney Spears fans celebrate the end of her conservatorship
