ODB DECLARES INNOCENCE

Wednesday March 31, 1999 12:00 AM EST

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Rapper ODB declared his innocence after a brief hearing on a charge he violated California's new law banning violent felons from wearing body armor. The Wu-Tang Clan rapper, whose real name is Russell Jones, appeared with his attorney Wednesday before Los Angeles Municipal Judge Richard Berry. Outside the courtroom, Jones said: "I'm innocent." Jones was arrested Feb. 16 for wearing a bulletproof vest. The entertainer, 30, had been scheduled to appear in another L.A. courtroom a day earlier, on Tuesday, but he missed that due to his arrest in New York that day on misdemeanor drug charges. He faces trial in two other L.A. cases -- on charges he threatened to kill the mother of one of his children and that he made death threats to guards at a nightclub.