The lesson here is don’t piss off the judge. My wife clerked for a judge and she told me that if you give the judge attitude, he will smack you down. The told me she saw a case where the Defendant after being sentenced to 30 days mouthed off to the judge, the found him in contempt and added another 30 days, he mouthed off again, and the judge added another thirty days.
He went from 30 days to 90 days for mouthing off.
Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh.
By Jove, I think she’s got it.
lowbrass, I am not sure why you are having such a hard time getting what I believe are two simple points. First, by virtue of who she is, PH is being treated differently in the system. It isn’t her fault that people want to try to harm her, or that corrections officers are under extra duress because she’s in the clink, but nevertheless that is what is happening. Second, throughout the criminal and legal proceedings, PH has done herself no favors in demonstrating to the judge that she is taking this seriously and has contrition, or even some semblance of understanding the gravity of the situation. That is why the judge gave specific terms about what she would not be able to do regarding home monitoring, etc.
I think this is from the story you are citing upthread, from the Home section of the LA Times, p. A1, by Megan Garvey and Andrew Blankstein:
What’s important here is that there are no stats on probation violators. Here’s the difference. PH did not commit a crime, receive a sentence, and go to jail. She violated probation three times and as a result is going to jail. I believe there’s a difference. Probation is a condition where because of your prior record and the level of offense, the court feels you don’t need to be in custody - assuming you follow the conditions of the probation. She didn’t. I don’t feel you can compare a regular sentence to one imposed as a condition of violating probation repeatedly. The data is missing, but I think it is reasonable to assume that the latter probably gets harsher treatment, because the violator in essence has made a mockery of the judicial system by not adhering to the terms of the probation (repeatedly). The reporters aren’t being accurate when they say that PH should have served four days, because they admit the data on how probation violators are dealt with are missing. I think this is open to interpretation, though, so I can see how you might think she is getting the usual sentence.
But when you see the judge’s ruling as a consequence of her disregard for the terms of her probation, it’s clear that he is making a statement that the 10% time rule is being suspended in her case.
I think you’re getting confused from people’s attempts to box me into a position I never took by ignoring who made the positive claim (you guys) vs. who is refuting the claim (me). The positive claim is “Paris Hilton got special treatment that was better than the treatment ‘ordinary’ people get.” My refutation of that claim is “She did not get better treatment than ‘ordinary’ people; if anything she got harsher treatment.”
I did not initially say the 45-day sentence was inappropriate.
Others said that the early release from jail was inappropriate, and I responded by saying it was not unusual to do that.
Can you see the difference?
But it’s a position that lacks merit. Let’s list the “specific things she did to warrant such treatment” from HH’s post #428
She didn’t go to her class.
She drove on a suspended license.
O.K., so 1 and 2 are the reason she ended up in court, and the experts have said that nobody serves a 45-day sentence for that.
O.K., admittedly stupid, but it’s hard to see how that should increase her sentence. The argument seems to be that if people didn’t follow her around, and hence she had a better chance of getting away with the crime, that she would deserve less punishment. That makes no sense.
She has access to cabs or chauffers.
Her mom asked for the prosecutor’s autograph.
She was late for the court appearance.
O.K., so in addition to the fact that 3, 4, and 5 would seem to have no relevance whatsover to the length of her sentence, do you guys have ANY evidence that it’s normal for people to get 45-day jail sentences because they did those things, in contradiction to what legal experts have said?
What I’m saying is that it’s not unusual for people to only serve 10% of their time in jail, EVEN PEOPLE WHO DO ALL THOSE THINGS.
I don’t think I said that. My guess is that the judge threw the book at her because of the media firestorm surrounding the issue, and his desire to make a name for himself.
I agree. I think the judge got mad and threw the book at her. What I disagree with is the idea that it was some sort of horrible travesty of justice when she initially got out of jail early.
I’m not having a hard time getting it. I just think it’s irrelevant.
I agree. People often are treated differently in jail. If you’re ill they send you to the infirmary. If they suspect there’s going to be an incident, they might put you in protective custody. If you’re insane, they might put you in psych ward. All that is completely irrelevant to the discussion we’re having. People in THIS THREAD are claiming that Paris’ family pulled some strings to get her favorable treatment. What you are saying has nothing to do with this.
[quote]
I think this is from the story you are citing upthread, from the Home section of the LA Times, p. A1, by Megan Garvey and Andrew Blankstein:
I didn’t. I mean, are we in the same thread here? We’re comparing violation of probation to violation of probation. Who ever said otherwise?
I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree that you can extrapolate this assumption to reach the conclusion, “Letting her out after 5 days was a travesty of justice”. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess that someone might get a longer sentence, but then to pile that assumption ON TOP OF the additional assumption that being released early means that she had to have bribed someone or somehow used her family’s influence, is unwarranted. Too many assumptions.
Neither do you have evidence to the contrary.
I never contested that. But go back and look at my earlier quotes from the article. Yes, the judge said they couldn’t release her early, but that’s the first time a judge has ever challenged the authority of the people running the jail to decide how to run the jail. It was unprecedented. A judge could draft an order demanding that a prisoner be horsewhipped; doesn’t mean it’s going to be followed. And if they didn’t whip the person, it doesn’t mean that person got better treatment than everyone else.
Look, I’m tired of this. I think I made my point, so I’ll see you around. Thanks.
One more thing and them I’m out: What about HH’s assertion that Paris could have gotten a cab or had a chauffeur because she’s rich, or about her mom asking for an autograph in court? If that was part of the determination, isn’t that punishing her for who she is? I notice you only selected HH’s better arguments and conveniently ignored the weak ones.
And I see we’re back to the strawman argument that I am supposedly protesting that her sentence is too “harsh”, even though I’ve corrected this several times now. Yeah, I’m definitely done here. Have fun arguing with your strawman.
I’m tired of this too, especially since you find so much of this “irrelevant.” This whole thing simply started with me asking if you agreed that PH getting her own cell was a step above what most people get. You saw this as some attack on your argument, and all this other stuff followed. You haven’t convinced me to abandon my position, so it’s best to leave it, I guess.
Count the number of your posts to this thread and how insanely heated you are getting with the number of my posts and how much less intense my responses are than yours. Then tell me who is all het up about poor little Ms. Hilton.
Piss off the judge, get hammered. Do you get that? I had a friend violate probation by not attending counseling. He got sent back to do his full 90 days. It happens. Hilton almost got away with it, if not for those [del]meddling kids[/del] overzealous media jackals. As it stands, she’s getting what any arrogant scofflaw would get. Deal with it.
Seething hatred? Nope. But unlike you, I don’t spend hours and hours posting to threads about her. YOU are the one with burning feelings about her, not me. Obviously. Perhaps you getting a life is in order.
Finally someone does at least some of the homework required to give this issue some reality:
So the claim that getting jail time at all is especially harsh looks false: about 60% of people were her set of offenses get the approximately 4 day jail time she got. So much for all the big hair lawyers who claimed that getting any jail at all was outrageous.
80%, however, got out long before her 23-day stint, which does suggest that her punishment was excessive compared at least to the rest of the country.
However, as I noted before, this sort of analysis doesn’t cover whether or not the sentence is excessive from this judge (since some are harsher than others), and it doesn’t consider the other elements the judge might legitimately consider in sentencing: like contempt for th court, showing no signs of caring about her duty to even acknowledge things she signs, showing up late, etc.
It also doesn’t cancel out the issue of favoritism in the sheriff violating an explicit sentencing order.
Has Paris been going through withdrawal in jail? That would explain a lot.
Well I wasn’t going to come back, but I saw the LA Times article today with the data. I guess Apos beat me to it.
Good point that getting any time at all isn’t that rare. (Guess I’ll have to agree with DtC less). The expert I quoted only said that nobody gets 45 days; he didn’t say nobody does any time.
This does provide good evidence that the “Oh my God she got out after 5 days what an outrage” crowd were being a little overly dramatic, though. 4 days sounds like pretty much the normal amount of time to serve.
And I agree that “serving more time than 80% of other people in similar situations” (exact wording of article) is pretty telling. You can’t really argue with that. By definition, she was treated more strictly than most people in similar situations.
I’m sure people will still argue that she got treated better than most people, but you’d have to use some pretty tortured logic, and/or make unfalsifiable assumptions to hold that position.
Also of interest from the article:
The early-release program started in 2002, so anecdotal stories from before that time do not apply, as people did serve longer sentences before then.
and…
That’s pretty much the same as I had surmised earlier. At least I’m in the company of a reputable newspaper.
Also interesting - the article claims 23 days is comparable to that served by many convicted of assault (4,000), burglary (1,800) and domestic violence (2,600). Normally, you’d think people who commit violent crimes would do more time than non-violent crimes.
So is anyone still seriously contending that she’s getting special treatment? I actually have to change my position: I said I wasn’t asserting that her treatment was harsh. After reading the data, I believe I have to say that it is harsh.
You just ignored the two other factors I noted were important:
Apos, it’s pretty clear lowbrass has a set position despite his/her claim of impassivity (what’s that all about?), so there’s not much point, I’m afraid. As I stated earlier, the case is unique because of PH’s bad behavior (I would imagine most people are cooperative and are actively trying to make a good impression on the judge) and the fact that the excuses that other probation violators might have - being busy at work, having to drive to work or do errands (it’s LA) - likely don’t apply to her. I imagine a working mother who violated probation by driving for these reasons would be more likely to receive a slap on the wrist than a multimillionaire who has resources that would make abiding by the terms of probation fairly easy.
Sure there’s a veneer of equality under the law, but judges have discretion about how to handle individual cases differently. Virtually everyone in this thread could cite a situation where a snarky, nonchalant attitude got someone a much stiffer sentence than one would have expected if they’d gone to court, hat in hand, and could at least muster a semi-believable justification for why they couldn’t adhere to the rules set in place by the probation.
I haven’t read anything to suggest any of that is true. Like I said, if you want to invent reasons why Paris supposedly deserved a longer sentence, and why it was “special treatment” to let Paris out of jail after the same amount of time as most other people, then you can convince yourself. But there’s no objective data to support that position. Sheer speculation.
It would be exceedingly difficult to prove a negative here, i.e. that no condition exists that makes Paris’ case ‘different’ than all the other cases. But what we have is many experts saying that she got a longer sentence than those under similar conditions. Given the choice, I give more credence to the published opinion of experts than to the speculation of random folks on a message board.
Pot? Meet kettle.
:dubious:
God, you’re a hypocritical ass.
Well played. 
Though to be fair, I meant my last response to you.
Thank you. And to you as well. And now I am once again out of here, pending any new developments in the story.
Yes you have. She WAS late for court. Her defense WAS that she hadn’t even read the agreement she signed for her own probation. And so on. Any of these things are valid things for a judge to consider in sentencing.
Why, 10 pages in, do you keep mistating the issues like this? She WASN’T “let out” she was given a treatment explicitly ordered that she was not to have by a sherrif with financial connections to her family and a long history of giving special treatment to celebrities (like Mel Gibson) on a “medical” reason that simply vanished at the point it became moot.
That’s not invented, that’s reality. You’re just denying it to be an ass.
But I already pointed what the study can and can’t tell us. What it can’t tell us is if the sentence was extreme given the judge. (I’m STILL waiting for a cite on this from either you or DtC) Nor can it tell us if the situations being compared really were similar given the other factors the judge cited at sentencing.
Seriously, you’re not really this intellectually dishonest, right? This is all a joke? None of those “experts” have offered any data or opinion that contradicts the two points I just listed.