http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/us/09hilton.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=us&pagewanted=print
June 9, 2007
Celebrity Justice Cuts Both Ways for Paris Hilton
By SHARON WAXMAN
LOS ANGELES, June 8 — The national obsession with celebrity collided head-on with the more serious issue of the equal application of justice on Friday, as a judge sent the socialite Paris Hilton back to jail some 36 hours after she was released for an unspecified medical problem.
Judge Michael T. Sauer ordered Ms. Hilton to serve the rest of her sentence in a county lockup after the city attorney, whose office had prosecuted her, filed a petition asking that the sheriff’s department be held in contempt or explain why it had released her with an ankle monitor on Thursday, after she had served just five days.
Ms. Hilton had been sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating the terms of her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. With time off for good behavior, she had been expected to serve 23 days.
Ms. Hilton, 26, wearing no makeup and with her hair disheveled, sobbed and screamed, “Mom, this isn’t right,” as she was taken from the packed courtroom by deputies.
It was a rare moment in this star-filled city, where badly behaving celebrities can seemingly get away with anything — or at least D.U.I. But Ms. Hilton, for all her money and celebrity, seems to have been caught between battling arms of the justice system here, with prosecutors and Judge Sauer determined to make a point by incarcerating her, only to have the sheriff’s office let her go.
“She’s a pawn in a turf fight right now,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles. “It backfired against her because she’s a celebrity. She got a harsher sentence because she was a celebrity. And then when her lawyer found a way out of jail, there was too much public attention for it to sit well with the court.”
The struggle between the judge and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, incited indignation far beyond the attention normally paid to a minor criminal matter.
Judicial and police officials here said they were inundated with calls from outraged residents and curious news media outlets from around the country and beyond. The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, decried Ms. Hilton’s release as an example of “double standards,” saying consideration was given to a pampered rich girl that would never have been accorded an average inmate.
Even the presidential candidate John Edwards found himself drawn into the debate. When asked about Ms. Hilton’s release on Thursday he said, “Without regard to Paris Hilton, we have two Americas and I think what’s important is, it’s obvious that the problem exists.”
California has been struggling to comply with a federal order to ease crowding in its jails and prisons, and Sheriff Lee Baca of Los Angeles County has carried out a program of early release. But that has frustrated prosecutors who believe that early release undermines their efforts to punish those found to have broken the law.
At a news conference on Friday, Sheriff Baca said: “The special treatment appears to be her celebrity status. She got more time in jail.” Under the normal terms of the early release program, he said, Ms. Hilton would not have served “any time in our jail.”
The city attorney whose office prosecuted Ms. Hilton’s case, Rocky Delgadillo, said preferential treatment had led to her being sent home with an ankle bracelet. In the original order sentencing Ms. Hilton to jail, the judge had stated that Ms. Hilton would not be allowed a work furlough, work release or an electronic monitoring device in lieu of jail time. “We cannot tolerate a two-tiered jail system where the rich and powerful receive special treatment,” Mr. Delgadillo said after learning of the release.
In a news conference on Friday, Mr. Baca said Ms. Hilton “had a serious medical condition,” though he declined to say what it was.
In a scene that seemed a parody of O. J. Simpson’s low-speed chase more than a decade ago, news cameras on Friday followed a police cruiser containing a sobbing Ms. Hilton as it drove slowly down the Los Angeles highway to Superior Court from her home.
The issue became nonstop fodder for channels like CNN and Fox News, as legal experts debated how rare the decision was to release her, and whether doing so neutralized, negated or otherwise neutered the judge’s original order.
Amid the debate over serious questions of equal justice under the law came speculation over the nature of Ms. Hilton’s “medical situation,” which Mr. Baca cited as the reason for her release. On television, commentators questioned whether she was a suicide risk or if she was eating properly in jail.
Judge Sauer had ordered the hearing for 9 a.m. When Ms. Hilton did not appear, apparently believing that she could participate by telephone, he sent sheriff’s deputies to escort her from her home.
When she arrived and the hearing began, the judge said he had received a call on Wednesday from an undersheriff informing him that Ms. Hilton had a medical condition and that the sheriff’s office would submit papers to the judge to consider releasing her early. The judge said the papers describing a “psychological” problem had not arrived, and he interrupted Friday’s court session every few minutes to state the time and note that the papers had still not shown up.
In ordering her return to jail, Judge Sauer said there were adequate medical facilities within the system to deal with Ms. Hilton’s problems.
Ms. Hilton was not the only high-profile defendant whose celebrity prompted a raised eyebrow from a judge this week. Also on Friday, the judge who sentenced I. Lewis Libby Jr. to prison this week issued an order dripping with sarcasm after receiving a supporting brief from a dozen prominent legal scholars, including Alan M. Dershowitz of Harvard and Robert H. Bork, the former Supreme Court nominee.
The judge, Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said he would be pleased to see similar efforts for defendants less famous than Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
“The court trusts,” Judge Walton wrote, in a footnote longer than the order itself, that the brief for Mr. Libby “is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step up to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions.”
“The court,” he added, “will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries.”
Adam Liptak and Maria Newman contributed reporting from New York, and Ana Facio Contreras from Los Angeles.
