![]() “Drugs are as readily available inside the jail as outside the jail.”ĭowney seemed aware that Mira was not going to grant his plea for freedom. Imprisonment, Shapiro said, would solve nothing. Shapiro said his client’s addiction was the result of his growing up in a dysfunctional family and being exposed to drugs at a young age. “During this time, the defendant was also in the midst of divorce proceedings,” the report said. His attendance declined to one or two meetings a week. The probation report said Downey had, at one point, been attending five to six 12-step meetings per week. In asking Mira to give his client another chance, Shapiro cited a probation report that recommended Downey not be sentenced to prison. He was represented in court Thursday by lawyer Robert Shapiro, one in a string of defense attorneys that the judge described as a “who’s who of the criminal bar in Los Angeles.” Treatment included two in-custody “lock-down” programs, two residential programs and two outpatient rehabilitation programs.ĭowney violated his probation three times by failing to submit to drug testing, according to court records. He was arrested two weeks later after he stumbled into a neighbor’s Malibu home under the influence of drugs.ĭowney, who won an Academy Award nomination for his performance in the movie “Chaplin,” was placed on probation and ordered to undergo drug counseling. “We tried rehabilitation and it simply hasn’t worked.”ĭowney was first arrested in June 1996, when he was pulled over in his pickup and found to be in possession of cocaine, heroin and a pistol. “Is there any question that if this defendant continues to use drugs we’re going to be reading his name in an obituary?” Mira said. Ultimately, Mira said that Downey posed a threat to the public and himself. “I’m kind of shaking in my thongs here,” he said.
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