SPECIAL REPORT * Is Robert Downey Jr. being coddled--or punished--because he is celebrity? There’s no question, though, that in his first 100 days in jail for a probation violation, the actor has received . . . : Mixed Reviews for a Star Behind Bars

When a pale Robert Downey Jr. was led away to serve his 180-day jail sentence for a probation violation in December, he could have expected a winter in a huge, decrepit county jail system where the closest exposure to outdoors can mean a roofed-in concrete courtyard.

And for the most part, that has been his life. He has suffered through jail food, a knuckled blow to the forehead from another inmate, and the general humiliation of being deprived of freedom.

But there’s no question that the one-time Oscar nominee’s jail stay--the ultimate length of which should be determined at a hearing Thursday--has been significantly different from the average inmate’s.

Escorted by sheriff’s deputies, he was allowed out on three days to go to movie studios to do post-production voice work on two films--”U.S. Marshals” and “In Dreams.” Before going to work on at least one of those trips, he was allowed to stop at his home to shower and change clothes.

He was also let out for a couple of hours to be treated by a private plastic surgeon after his forehead was cut by an attacking inmate Feb. 13.

And, in a place where hospitality is not the norm, some jail guards have been solicitous to Downey, chatting him up in his cell and inquiring about his spirits. He--perhaps in turn--has signed autographs and posed for snapshots with them.

On the face of it, all this looks like just another case of celebrity coddling. But in fact, Downey’s celebrity can also be viewed as a double-edged sword.

Many nonviolent inmates without extensive criminal records are released early on electronic monitoring, often to hold down jail overcrowding. But both the judge and the Sheriff’s Department nixed that in Downey’s case. And that, complains Downey’s attorney, Ira Reiner, was the decision that made possible the other controversies over how Downey has been treated in confinement. “But for the fact that he’s a celebrity,” said Reiner, a former Los Angeles County district attorney, “he would have been released.”

In less than 100 days in jail, Downey has caused the Sheriff’s Department an enormous amount of mental and physical effort. Officials have agonized over where to place him, moving him from the Twin Towers facility to the Men’s Central Jail, sometimes putting him in solitary confinement for his own protection. They considered, then decided against, the idea of putting him in the small, remote sheriff’s substation on Catalina Island. (What would the public think about a celebrity doing his time on picturesque Catalina, where his hardest chore would be washing deputies’ cars?)

And investigators are now examining allegations that deputies inappropriately fraternized with Downey--posing for pictures with him, and breakfasting and lunching with him while he was out doing studio work.

What it adds up to is a portrait of the unique pressures that the occasional transgressions of Hollywood’s elite place on the nation’s biggest jail system.

The 32-year-old actor, who was nominated for an Oscar for his leading part in the 1992 movie “Chaplin,” found himself in the unenviable role of celebrity jail inmate after he violated the terms of a 1996 probationary sentence.

Malibu Municipal Judge Lawrence Mira, sentencing Downey for heroin and cocaine possession after three arrests that occurred in the space of a month and a half, ordered him to spend six months at a residential treatment facility and three years on probation.

(Downey was allowed out of the treatment center with drug counselors to host “Saturday Night Live” in November 1996. During his opening monologue, he talked about how he spent his summer and narrated a mock slide presentation that showed some of his activities, such as playing basketball in handcuffs.)

In October, he violated his probation when he failed to take a mandatory drug test and was found to have used drugs. On Dec. 8, Mira told Downey, “When you make the choice for drugs, you’re going to jail,” and sentenced him to six months. Downey figured to be released in four months with good behavior.

Downey has been served by three prominent attorneys--Charles English, Michael Nasatir and now Reiner, who has represented him since shortly after he began serving time in jail. It was Nasatir and his partner, Richard Hirsch, who obtained a court agreement in April that allowed Downey to finish any work he started on probation--even if he violated his probation, as long as the violation did not “constitute a danger to public safety.”

Bond companies had refused to insure Downey on movies at all, fearing that if he violated his probation, he would have to return to jail, leaving a movie production company with a costly problem. Since the criminal justice system encourages convicts on probation to work, Mira agreed to give Downey the special condition.

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When the movie companies needed Downey to do additional voice work--what’s called “looping”--on films in February and March, Reiner went to the judge and reminded him of the agreement. Downey got three days out to do work, until Sheriff Sherman Block publicly decried the arrangement and got an appellate court to block Downey’s release to do one more day of voice work.

Reiner blames it on politics--and stories in The Times and other media revealing that deputies had been fraternizing with Downey during his time out.

“The sheriff wasn’t angry at Robert Downey. He was angry at all these bad stories and angry at the position he might be in with more stories,” Reiner said.

Asked about Downey’s visit to his plastic surgeon, Reiner responded that any inmate has the right to see an outside doctor if he can afford it. He said the blow that Downey took left a gash in his forehead that required numerous stitches.

Paul Hoffman, lead counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union on litigation involving jail conditions, said he generally endorses jail releases for work. “Just because he’s famous and has a different kind of job doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be able to do it.”

But Downey’s prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin L. Herscovitz, says Downey doesn’t deserve to be allowed out of jail to work any more than any other inmate whose career was interrupted by a crime.

“Everyone in the jail, with the exception of someone who is perhaps single or a transient, has someone who is dependent on that person for support,” he said.

Reiner says the image of Downey’s time out for work has been distorted. He called the reported tales of Downey having lunch with deputies at a studio commissary exaggerated. “It was this little room right off the recording studio,” Reiner said. “There were a whole bunch of little take-out boxes--and a platter with bread and mayonnaise and mustard to make sandwiches. . . . That’s hardly eating in the studio commissary.”

As for Downey’s pre-work shower and the breakfast with deputies, Reiner said: “I asked if it would be possible to stop off at his house and shower and change clothes instead of going in with all the jail stink on you. You’re going to be working with people. . . . While they were there, who knows, they had breakfast. Horrors.”

Reiner says the accusations about deputies fraternizing with Downey are overblown.

“When O.J. Simpson was at county jail, various deputies asked him for his autograph. When superiors found out, they said, ‘Knock it off.’ Here, somebody asks Downey for an autograph and they’re making a federal case out of it.”

The ACLU’s Hoffman notes that Downey is probably not the first person in jail to be treated well. “There are guards who treat inmates with respect,” Hoffman said. “But in general, the treatment is either not very respectful or it’s just businesslike. They move a lot of people in the jails. I think you get the whole range of situations based on different people. It’s really a wide range of treatment.”

Besides, Hoffman says, guards are simply going to react to a celebrity differently. “It’s human nature,” he said. “Guards are people, and they would do what other people do.”

And it is not surprising that Downey, who has a widely acknowledged talent for being effortlessly charming and amusing with friends, colleagues and journalists, would exercise those skills in jail, especially with deputies who hold the power to make his stay miserable or bearable. In addition to chatting up deputies and signing autographs, he has amused inmates as well.

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One inmate who breakfasted with Downey in January wrote in a letter from jail to a Times reporter that the actor had regaled a table of inmates with his imitation of an old-fashioned English butler: “I’m the bloody shot-caller today, old chaps. I’m all that and a bag of chips. Anyone who gives me any lip should step to me. How about you, chap? Do you challenge my right to call the shots at this bloody table?”

Downey has never been housed with the general population, but during part of his stay he did take his meals in a dining hall. Now, he is housed in an isolated unit, and his meals are brought to him.

Celebrities as well as other controversial inmates are never going to be tossed into the general inmate population. For instance, actor Christian Slater was just released early after serving 59 days of a three-month sentence for battery and drug charges at the city jail in La Verne--a smaller, cleaner, calmer facility than the teeming County Jail. The only publicity he received came during a hostage-taking robbery at a supermarket. Victims were taken to the La Verne police station. Slater passed out coffee and signed autographs.

Block says he can recall only one case of a special release for a job commitment--when motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel was allowed to leave jail for an appearance some 20 years ago. And he makes no secret about not trusting Downey’s friendly demeanor.

“He is very manipulative, I can tell you that,” Block said at a recent news conference. “From what I hear from people over at the jail, he is always trying to con somebody into something.” He declined to offer examples.

What Downey and his attorney have not been able to accomplish is getting him out early. They face a Sheriff’s Department that does not want to look like it is giving special treatment to Downey, especially as Block campaigns for reelection, and a tough judge who wants to make a point to the actor.

“Of all the people probably involved in this case, I have been the longest involved in attempting to rehabilitate Mr. Downey,” Mira said during a January court proceeding via a telephone conference call among the lawyers. “It’s now time for Mr. Downey to basically be punished--not to be rehabilitated, but to be punished.”