Corey Clark has become the latest casualty of American Idol‘s second season, and it’s not because he was voted off.
Reuters reports Clark apparently neglected to let Fox producers know he is facing trial on misdemeanor charges of battery against his sister and resisting arrest in an incident last October, months before Clark was chosen as one of the 32 semifinalists for the second edition of American Idol.
Fox said in a statement that Clark “withheld information about a prior arrest which, had it been known, might have affected his participation in the show.
“Due to his failure to disclose, compounded by an error in a police report which misspelled Corey’s name, the incident was not discovered during a background check,” it continued. “The producers and network feel that Corey’s behavior warrants his disqualification.”
Clark becomes the third contestant to be booted off the show for illegal activities. The most recent was Frenchie Davis, a 23-year-old competitor whom many believed had the vocal power to make it all the way. She was dismissed in February after the network found out she posed topless on a porn site that also allegedly featured pictures of underage girls. Davis was reportedly over 18 at the time.
American Idol semifinalist Jaered Andrews was also kicked off the program in the early stages when Fox officials uncovered an arrest for an assault charge in connection with a bar fight in Pennsylvania that ended with a man’s death, Reuters reports. The information was attained after Andrews had made the cut as one of 32 semifinalists but before the first episode aired in January.
A fourth contestant, finalist Lashundra Cobbins (Trenyce), 22, was arrested on a theft charge in Tennessee in 1999 but has since successfully completed a pretrial diversion program and had her criminal record expunged. Unlike the others, Fox says, Cobbins came clean with the show’s producers and was allowed to remain on the show.
