Brandon Vandenburg, one of the suspects in the Vanderbilt rape case, has pleaded guilty to charges for a confrontation with a security guard in California.
The case in Vandenburg's home state of California certainly took a backseat to the far more serious charges he faced here in Tennessee.
Vandenburg, along with Cory Batey, were accused of raping a woman on the Vanderbilt campus. Both were convicted last year, but the verdicts were thrown out because the judge ruled the jury foreman was biased.
"Mr. Vandenburg should be put back in position where he was prior to conviction," said the judge at the time.
The two former Vanderbilt football players were released, but the legal battle in California led the court here to up Vandenburg's original $350,000 bond.
"Mr. Vandenburg, I'm gonna increase his bond by 50-thousand," said the judge.
So it took $400,000 for Vandenburg to return home, all because of a battery charge involving a security guard at his little brother's school.
The incident happened while he was out on bond awaiting the rape trial.
Newschannel 5 has learned Vandenburg settled the case by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of using offensive words in a public place.
He was sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation, but could this case work against Vandenburg in the second rape trail?
"Of course the prosecution would like to have jurors hear that. It's bad character evidence," said Newschannel 5 legal analyst Nick Leonardo.
That begged the next question of, will the California case come up at the rape trial - maybe, but Leonardo said the odds are against it unless Vandenburg decides to take the stand in his own defense.
He didn't during the first trial, and it's unlikely he will in the second. The second Vanderbilt rape trial was scheduled to begin on April 3.
