Randy Travis to enter drunken-driving plea

HERMAN, Texas (AP) — Country music star Randy Travis is expected to enter a guilty plea this week in a drunken-driving case in North Texas, where he was arrested over the summer naked after crashing his Pontiac Trans Am.

Details of the plea agreement will be released following Travis' court appearance Thursday in Sherman, Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown said Monday. He said the singer will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge that is punishable by up to two years in jail and a $4,000 fine.

His defense attorney, John Nix, said a sentence of probation is expected and that Travis is "looking forward to putting this behind him and moving on."

Authorities have said a Trans Am registered to the 53-year-old singer veered off a roadway near Tioga, a town about 60 miles north of Dallas where the entertainer lives, and struck several barricades in a construction zone the night of Aug. 7. Investigators said Travis was found naked and combative at the scene, and his blood-alcohol level was more than 0.15. The legal limit for driving is 0.08.

He walked out of jail the next morning wearing scrubs, no shoes and a University of Texas baseball cap.

Travis also had faced a charge of retaliation for allegedly threatening officers, but that charge is no longer on file with the court.

Travis' lawyers have previously said the singer has a great deal of respect for law enforcement and has stopped drinking alcohol.

The August accident was among a string of recent run-ins with the law for Travis.

Police in suburban Dallas cited Travis following an Aug. 23 incident in a church parking lot in which he allegedly intervened in an argument involving a woman he knows and her estranged husband. Nobody was hurt. He pleaded not guilty to simple assault in that matter and has a jury trial scheduled for March.

Travis also was arrested last February in Denton County, northwest of Dallas, for public intoxication. That case is no longer on file with the county court and appears to have been dismissed.