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Weeks passed with no ray of hope. Roy sat stupefied in front of a single, shared TV perpetually tuned to police dramas, claims he was repeatedly threatened by the deputies, and was allowed a single physical activity — a once-weekly trip to a roof, where he could see sunlight or, on bad days, sit in cold rain.
He made regular trips in the cage buses to Van Nuys for his criminal case. Roy insisted he was innocent, declining a plea deal and believing that the charge was an insane reaction to what was, first of all, a dispute between ex-lovers over a business deal and second, a clearly noncriminal threat to blog about it and thus exercise his right to free speech.
But, he says, “One judge was yawning whenever my lawyer spoke, refusing to listen to us.”
Bondsman DeMayo has seen a lot, but he was on edge over Roy’s lengthening, unexplained incarceration. “Everyone was stonewalling us. We can’t find the file — or he’s not at this facility. Or they’d put me on hold [on the phone] for 45 minutes. I had the booking number, but they would say, ‘We don’t know what to tell you — he’s not here.’ ”
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One of the craziest stories I’ve ever reported. The tale of how film director Duncan Roy fell into a bizarre glitch between the LA County Sheriff’s Department and the Immigration Service and as a result spent three months trapped in the brutal LA Men’s Central Jail denied bail for reasons that he could not understand and unable to appeal or protest his fate.
The story is up at The LA Weekly. Tomorrow I’ll have an interview with Duncan on my podcast.
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