British comedian sentenced to 20 hours of community service in March 15 incident.By Gil Kaufman Russell Brand Photo: Getty Images Though it would have likely supplied him with lots of good material, Russell Brand avoided a six-month trip to prison on Thursday (July 26) when a New Orleans judge sentenced the British comedian to 20 hours of community service over a charge of throwing a photographer's iPhone through a window. According to Reuters, Brand, 37, who was not in New Orleans Municipal Court when the sentence for the misdemeanor charge was handed down, was ordered to pay a $500 fine on top of the community service.