Roger Avary Moving to County Jail for Tweeting

Posted on December 1, 2009

Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary has been yanked out of the work furlough program he was in and has been transferred to the Ventura County Jail where he will finish out the rest of his sentence for DUI. Avary was discovered to have been tweeting from jail about the terrible conditions and that is thought to be the reason he was transferred to county. Under the work furlough program he slept in a barracks like hangar, but was allowed to leave to work during the day. Now he will be incarcerated full time.

Until last week, Avary had been permitted to leave the furlough program daily to work at a production office, where he sent out tweets about strip searches, lockdowns and talks with gangbangers, officials said.
But after The Times published reports about the short messages, Avary was transferred on Thanksgiving to county jail. The tweets played a role in the decision, Bonfiglio said, but he said probation officials also had "security issues."

Sheriff's Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio told the L.A. Times, "He really messed up,. He could have done nine months out of a year sentence, and not even in lock-up, for killing someone. Now he is going to do the remainder of that time in county jail."

Avary pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in connection with a car accident in which he was driving and his passenger Andreas Zini was killed and Avary's wife Gretchen was seriously injured. Avary crashed into a telephone road on a rural road on the way home from dinner.

So what security issues were so bad that necessitated moving him to county? We think it was the tweets. Conditions in the county jail are going to be much worse than what Avary reported on at the work furlough camp, that's for sure.