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Downey Jr. May Have Jail Time ShortenedActor's Stay In State Penitentiary May Be Shortened If Appeals Court Rules In His FavorLOS ANGELES, Updated 6:00 p.m. EDT July 27, 2000 -- Robert Downey Jr. should be released from state prison immediately because a Malibu judge made errors in calculating the actor's three-year sentence, his lawyers told a state Court of Appeal panel Thursday, according to a local news wire. "He's already served his time ... He should have been out in February. It's a sad tale," lawyer Ross A. Nabatoff told the four-judge appellate panel.
Downey is set to be paroled Nov. 2, but his lawyers say that he actually should have been released five months ago. They contend that the judge forgot to credit Downey for 53 days in a lock-down drug rehabilitation program, and that the judge failed to state whether the term for his felony cocaine possession conviction was being run concurrently or consecutively with misdemeanor drug and weapons charges. The judge gave Downey credit for 201 days of jail time, which was expected to result in the actor serving a year and 77 days in prison, Deputy District Attorney Martin Herscovitz said at the time. Downey's defense team also alleges that the judge acted improperly by sentencing Downey to the high prison term when he could have reinstated his probation or chosen some lesser option. The judge imposed the prison sentence last year, despite Downey's plea that he be allowed to complete a 60-day Impact House Drug and Alcohol Treatment program at the Biscailuz Center. Mira had sent the actor to the lockdown facility run by the sheriff's department after Downey admitted violating his probation for a third time. The judge had repeatedly warned Downey he would be sent to prison if there was one more transgression. In sentencing Downey to prison, the judge noted that the star of "Chaplin" and numerous other films had been enrolled in no less than seven residential and outpatient drug programs since 1996. At Thursday's hearing, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey B. Kahan countered, "This is an appellant who has continually shown contempt for the criminal justice system. The court acted appropriately." Downey had already served the time for misdemeanor offenses so the sentence was automatically run concurrently, Kahan said. The appellate panel is expected to rule within 90 days. But Downey's lawyers said that they are hopeful that a decision will be handed down much sooner, or that the appellate court will allow Downey to be freed on bail pending an appeal. Downey -- who told the judge in 1997 that he had been addicted to drugs since he was 8 -- is being held at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison at Corcoran. He was arrested three times in 1996, including once when he wandered into a neighbor's Malibu home and fell asleep on a child's bed. He was sentenced to county jail in December 1997 after he admitted violating his probation by using an illegal drug. In an interview airing on Thursday morning's "Today show," Downey said, "There's no way to explain how spiritually debilitating it is to be taken out of the loop of your life. It's like dying." Wearing prison blues and looking tired, he said, "Prison culture is really something that's hard to explain. But it's opened my eyes to a lot. "For some reason, I had expected that I was going somewhere that was, like, 'the treatment center next to the prison.' And I got here and it was like it was a prison yard. And I came here and I was, like, 'Wow.'" At Corcoran, he is just another inmate. "You see a lot of correctional officers -- some armed, some not -- all of whose job basically is to protect society from you for the time being. You know, I have been called 'the menace to society,'" he said, laughing at his own remark. His friend James Toback told "Today" that he calls the actor frequently, but "it's hard to know exactly what he's thinking and feeling. "Every 30 seconds a recording comes on and says 'you are talking to an inmate from the state penitentiary.' How many people could survive 17 months of agonizing -- I mean agonizing -- daily life?" Downey said that he keeps tabs on his son. "It hasn't really been about visits. But, yeah, I talk to him. And I know that he's doing really well. I got his report card and all that stuff, so that was comforting. His mom's doing a great job of taking care of him, you know." Previous Stories:
Copyright 2001 by ChannelOklahoma.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Judge Lawrence Mira sentenced Downey last August after the Oscar-nominated entertainer repeatedly violated his probation on drug and weapons charges. 
