Downey admits to cocaine charge, but avoids prison
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Tuesday July 17, 2001
The Guardian
Robert Downey Jr pleaded guilty yesterday to cocaine possession and was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to attend a residential drug rehabilitation centre for a year.
The judge wished the actor good luck as he told him he would face four years in jail if he broke the many conditions of his probation.
Downey, who was nominated for an Emmy last week for his role in the television series Ally McBeal, was arrested at the Merv Griffin resort in Palm Springs last November after an anonymous phone call to the police had suggested that he was in possession of drugs and firearms.
No firearm was found but he was arrested for the possession of cocaine. He was arrested in Culver City in Los Angeles in April under the influence of drugs.
Downey pleaded no contest to the charge and agreed to all the conditions made by Judge Randall White in a local court in Indio, California. Judge White told him: Mr Downey, this is not a gift ... this is going to be hard work. He also ordered Downey to pay more than $6,000 (£4,272) in fines and courts costs.
The conditions of his sentence require Downey to participate in a residential programme at a rehabilitation centre where he has been living since April. He has also been instructed to seek work, to avoid drug users, to submit himself to regular drug tests and to join Narcotics Anonymous or a similar programme.
Demonstrators from the Libertarian Party inside the court held up signs saying The war on drugs is futile . They had earlier demonstrated outside the courtroom as Downey, 36, managed to dodge battalions of media when he arrived.
There were seven satellite vans and countless other television and news media outside the courtroom, prompting one journalist to suggest that there were more people at the event than had covered the Gulf War.
Downey's lawyers, including Jim Epstein, whose father, Julius Epstein, wrote Casablanca, had earlier brokered a deal whereby he would plead guilty if no jail time was sought. He was released from jail only last year after serving a sentence for parole violation on earlier drugs and firearms charges.
Downey, who started taking drugs as an eight-year-old and was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Chaplin in 1992, is a beneficiary of a new drugs policy, which was approved by the electorate in California last November.
Under the new measure, Proposition 36, non-violent drug offenders can be offered treatment rather than a term in prison. First arrested in 1996, Downey has been in and out of court on drugs charges ever since. Since he was released from jail last year, Downey, has been acting in Ally McBeal.
The prosecution was understood to be happy to settle because the case had some flaws to it: the anonymous caller had given bogus information about a gun and there was a question mark as to how the police gained entry to his room.
It was felt that, in a jury trial, some jurors might have sympathised with Downey and sought his acquittal.
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