LOS ANGELES — Ron Jeremy will be released from jail to a private residence for health reasons, in the latest development following the January 2023 decision by a Los Angeles judge to declare him incompetent to stand trial for multiple cases of sexual assault and rape.
The news was first reported Friday by the Los Angeles Times, which obtained leaked emails sent to alleged victims by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
A California judge granted a request by Jeremy’s conservators for him to be placed in a private residence to receive around-the-clock medical care, after no medical facility would take him, the Times reported.
The leaked email by DA Paul Thompson explained to the victims that Jeremy’s “medical condition has deteriorated to the point that he is essentially bedridden.”
In August, a spokesperson for the DA’s office confirmed to XBIZ that Jeremy was the subject of a probate conservatorship, following a March request by Jeremy’s sister, Susan Billotte, to appoint attorney Ellen Finkelberg as conservator, and for her to be given authority to make decisions regarding the former adult performer’s finances and health care.
“He has been found incompetent to stand trial in a criminal case due to a diagnosis with symptoms of Lewy body dementia and has a pending transfer to a state hospital,” the petition explained, urging the judge to appoint a conservator to help with Jeremy’s transfer to a “private secured perimeter facility specializing in treatment of dementia.”
A probate conservatorship is a type of conservatorship under California Probate Code section 1800 that, according to jurisprudence, is usually imposed “when it is established that the conservatee is unable to provide properly for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter.”
Probate conservatorships “may be ordered upon the application of relatives or friends of the conservatee, rather than only upon the application of the public guardian.”
In January, when Judge Robert S. Harrison ruled that Jeremy was not competent to be tried for the multiple counts of rape and sexual assault alleged against him, the judge considered medical reports by the defense and by the prosecution. Both reports agreed that Jeremy suffers from an “incurable neurocognitive decline.”
Jeremy has remained in custody, either at the Men’s County Jail or at a county medical facility, since his arrest in June 2020. In May, Jeremy’s attorney, Stuart Goldfarb, told XBIZ that Jeremy was still at Patton State Hospital, a forensic psychiatric hospital in San Bernardino.
After an August 2021 grand jury indictment was returned, Jeremy pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of forcible rape, seven counts of forcible oral copulation, six counts of sexual battery by restraint, four counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object, two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious or asleep person and one count each of lewd act upon a child under the age of 14 or 15, sodomy by use of force and assault with intent to commit rape.
In Nov. 2021, XBIZ published a detailed account of the 21 accusations that form the Los Angeles County district attorney’s case against Jeremy. It remains the only comprehensive journalistic account of the testimonies given before the grand jury.
For more of XBIZ’s coverage of the Ron Jeremy case, click here.
