Drug-selling charges against Philip Seymour Hoffman’s friend filed after the actor’s overdose were officially dropped.
Reuters reports a Manhattan district attorney dropped the case against Robert Aaron Vineberg, 58, who was suspected to have supplied Hoffman with heroin.
The charges were dropped on Thursday due to "evidentiary issues that have come to light,” according to the New York Times. The report claimed the officers who arrested Vineberg did not read him his Miranda rights, which meant his statements would not hold up in court.
However, Vineberg did plead guilty to possession of heroin, agreeing to “serve five years' probation, perform community service, continue drug addiction treatment and to forfeit money confiscated during his arrest,” according to Reuters.
Hoffman, 46, died of a drug overdose on Feb. 2 leaving behind his children Cooper, 10, Tallulah, 7, and 5-year-old Willa. The toxicology report claimed the actor tested positive for heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine in his system.
Promotional images of Hoffman were recently released for the upcoming “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” film. Back in May, director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson explained to Sydney Morning Herald how they would finish the film in light of Hoffman’s death. The actor played Plutarch Heavensbee in "The Hunger Games" franchise.
"We finished the majority of his work. I think he might have had eight to 10 days left on our schedule. In most of those scenes, Phil didn't have any dialogue," Lawrence said. "We are going to put him into those scenes, but we're only using real footage. We're not creating anything digital or a robotic version of him."
"We had to rewrite the dialogue scenes that he had left and there's no question that shooting those scenes is painful without him," Jacobsen told the Herald. "We might give a line of Plutarch's to Haymitch or Effie, but only in circumstances that we are able to do that without undermining the intent of the scene."
"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1" will be released to theaters Nov. 21.
