The sobriety-challenged actor put in some serious court time in Laguna Niguel, California, Wednesday, pleading guilty to three counts of public drunkeness, stemming from separate incidents earlier this year. He also pleaded guilty to violating a 1996 drunken-driving probation--a sentence levied after Vincent totaled his car and nearly paralyzed himself.
His courtroom confession netted him a total of three years' probation, six months in outpatient rehab and an $800 fine, according to the Orange County, California, District Attorney.
D.A. spokeswoman Toni Richards says Vincent, 55, was busted three times within a three-week period last March near his home in the upscale, southern county enclave of Coto de Caza. "On March 1, he was sleeping in a drainage ditch; on March 3, he was sitting on a curb; and on March 23, he was yelling and pounding on neighbors' doors," she says.
In each instance, Vincent was arrested and released.
Richards says her office declined to push for jail time because Vincent has been enrolled in an alcohol treatment center for two months. And two psychologists wrote letters to the court commending the actor's good behavior of late.
Vincent is due back in court on December 15 for a progress report. The actor has added incentive to stay sober--if he has a "dirty" drug or alcohol test between now and then, he faces six months in a county lockup, says Richards.
Vincent's bad-boy ways derailed a once-promising career and almost cost him his life. In 1996, he smashed his Mazda into his girlfriend's Caddy as she was making a turn--his car slammed into a utility pole, leaving Vincent with a broken neck.
Thanks in part to a speedy ambulance crew, Vincent did not suffer any paralysis. He was so grateful that he sued the paramedics who saved his life--claiming they ruined his voice by sticking a breathing tube down his throat. (Vincent, whose blood-alcohol level was twice California's legal limit, pleaded guilty to drunken driving and driving with a suspended license and wound up on probation.)
The onetime Hollywood golden boy, whose sun-tanned, surfer-dude image served him well in a few minor 1970s classics, including White Line Fever and The Mechanic, has a long rap sheet. In 1983, he was put on probation after being busted on his first drunken-driving charge. In 1984, he was arrested three times for assault and disturbing the peace. In the mid-1990s, his former live-in girlfriend won a $400,000 judgment against him for her claim that he kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant, inducing a miscarriage.
Now relegated to no-budget knockoffs, Vincent's recent oeuvres include such blink-and-you-miss-it flicks as White Boy and the unfortunately titled No Rest for the Wicked.