Former champ Tyson receives a slap on wrist

The former heavyweight champion left court with an entourage.

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Mike Tyson could have received more than four years in prison. He left the courtroom having to serve all of one day in an open-air jail.

The former heavyweight champion was sentenced Monday for cocaine possession and driving under the influence.

“I take responsibility for my actions,” Tyson told the judge. He left the courthouse flanked by supporters, lit a cigar and drove away in the back of a black Mercedes.

The 41-year-old boxer will serve his day in jail Tuesday for DUI. He received three years of probation for the cocaine charge and also will have to pay a fine, submit to drug testing and serve 360 hours of community service.

He will be incarcerated in Tent City, Maricopa County’s infamous jail near a dog pound and trash dump. Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Tyson will wear the standard-issue pink underwear and black-and-white striped uniform. He’ll stay in an unoccupied area, apart from Tent City’s 1,500 other inmates. Tyson visited juvenile inmates in Tent City in 1999, telling them to stay out of trouble.

“Apparently he didn’t listen to his own advice,” Arpaio said.

Prosecutors had argued that Tyson should be behind bars, given his violent criminal past. But Superior Court Judge Helene Abrams was impressed with how the boxer has tried to atone following his Dec. 29 arrest in which his car almost hit a sheriff’s deputy’s vehicle.

“You worked to address your addiction and self-destructive behavior,” Abrams said before sentencing him.

Tyson had numerous supporters in court, including former wife Monica Turner and people who worked at a California drug treatment clinic where he was treated, lawyer said.

Prosecutor Shane Krauser recommended one year in prison, although the maximum was four years, three months. Krausner said Tyson was a multiple offender who previously had been convicted of a violent crime and that only now has he sought treatment for his drug addiction.

He noted Tyson was convicted of rape in Indiana in 1992 and pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault charges in Maryland in 1999.

“Judge, by my calculations, this is his fourth or fifth chance,” Krauser said.

County Attorney Andrew Thomas was disappointed by the sentence.

“His intentional criminal conduct seriously endangered the public,” Thomas said in a statement.

Tyson, who used to live in Paradise Valley, was spotted driving erratically last year after leaving Scottsdale’s Pussycat Lounge. An officer said he saw Tyson wiping a white substance off the dashboard of his black BMW, and that his speech was slurred. Police found bags of cocaine in his pocket and in the car.