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Editor: Bob Battle
Profession: DUI Defense Lawyer

Category: Celebrity DUI

In a case of "lost and found," actressMichelle Rodriguez, formerly of the television series, "Lost," was released from a Los Angeles jail due to overcrowding. She served 18 days of a 180-day sentence for violating her DUI probation in a drunk-driving case from 2005, according to the Associated Press.

Rodriguez received the jail time in October 2007, after admitting she failed to provide proof of community service and drinking alcohol on repeated occasions while wearing an alcohol-monitoring device.

Rodriguez had been on three years probation after pleading no contest to hit-and-run, driving on a suspended license and drunken driving in two separate incidents in 2003. Two years later, she violated her probation and was arrested in Hawaii on a drunken driving charge, reported the AP.

Nonviolent Behavior, Crowded Conditions Free Rodriguez

This week, she was released early under a program dealing with overcrowding by allowing nonviolent female inmates to serve as little as 10 percent of their sentence. She was incarcerated in Lynwood and spent the Christmas holidays there.

As many as 50 women a day are released early, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. "She was treated the same as all other female inmates," he said. "The sheriff supports the desire to have inmates serve full sentences but Los Angeles County has only one women's jail and it is 'bursting at the seams,'" he said.

In 2007, Rodriguez won the American Latino Media Arts (ALMA) award -- which honors Hispanic artists -- for her supporting role on "Lost." Besides her appearance on the ABC television network's "Lost," Rodriguez appeared in the films "The Fast and The Furious," "Blue Crush" and "Girlfight."