But she didn’t break the law in NM.
After two separate DUIs, and after being pulled over before that and having to sign a statement saying that she would not drive.
Is regularly driving drunk illegal in NM?
Al Sharpton weighs in:
http://drudgereport.com/flash5.htm
I like the long, bizarre digression about his hosting Saturday Night Live, something I still can’t believe really happened.
This pisses me off. Not because of Paris Hilton per se, who I really couldn’t give less of a shit about, but just because it illustrates how fundamentally flawed our justice system is. Time and time again we watch rich people given lighter sentences in nicer prisons than poor people, to the point that it seems normal. Poor guy caught with a couple ounces of pot? Off to jail for months or years. Rich guy caught with a medicine cabinet full of Oxycontin? Probation and rehab. Poor guy violates his probation twice? He’s going to jail for the full 45 days, even if he cries and doesn’t like the food. Rich brat does the same? Jail for three days. Three frickin’ days! It’s ridiculous.
The day after the anniversary of D-Day, Paris goes free…
Coincidence?
Indeed, being held in solitary confinement for a DUI is clearly what I think of as preferential.
With people like this, well known, controversial and an easy target, the prison system isn’t really set up to deal with them in a decent manner. Put her in the general population, and she’ll get beaten, put her in solitary and she’s getting some of the harshest punishment we have, for a misdemeanor.
If she was specifically sentenced harshly because of her celebrity, then I don’t mind if the harsh treatment is ameliorated with soft treatment on the “type” of sentence.
EDIT: In either case I think it’s bad PR for her. And yes, there is such a thing as bad pr.
Does anyone have any statistical evidence that she was treated better than the average offender in a similar situation? I know everyone enjoys bitching about rich people, unfairness, and whatnot; but it seems people around these boards also enjoy facts and statistics.
As I said in another thread on the subject, if you don’t like people serving 5 days of a 40 day sentence (if indeed that is normal, as previously quoted) you need to support increasing jail capacity 8-fold. Seems ridiculous for traffic court.
In the case of Paris, I’m not seeing a problem here. The twat has zero concept of what reality is, she doesn’t know what it’s like to be homeless, to not know where her next meal is coming from, or anything like that. Her idea of hardship is a Beamer being on backorder. I’ve got no problem with someone being wealthy, I’d just like for them to know what it’s like for the rest of us on the planet. Christ, with amount of change she’s probably got in the seat cushions of her sofa, I could change the freakin’ world! I’m no fan of Bill Gates, but at least he does something productive with his money! Paris? Bitch wouldn’t know productive if it was a shark with a frickin’ laser on it’s head that attacked her.
He may have a point about rich celebrities, but is the wrong person to point it out- how long did he or Tawana Brawley serve in jail for an incident 1000 times worse?
Since when is the job of the courts to teach someone the value of a dollar?
With prison overcrowding, it should be restricted to hardcore criminals. She should’ve been sentenced to cleaning the freeway or something like that.
Well, in the case of Paris, I don’t think that it’s possible for her to learn that, but if the greatest hardship of her life is 3 days in solitary, I don’t have any sympathy for her, ya know?
The fact of the matter is she was not arrested for the 2 DUIs (didn’t know she had 2). She was arrested for violating probation. Should they have tossed her in the first time she was caught violating her probation instead of making her sign a probation violation ticket? Yeppers. Is that her fault? Or the cop who lacked the cajones to arrest her? Or was it the cop knowing full well that the result of him actually arresting her in Feb. (and of course every other similar offender) would result in the same thing happening?
It’s indicative of the law and the court’s enforcement and the ability of the jail system to keep up. She, and every other similar offender, should have served the full 90 days for probation violation, but society is reduced to picking and chosing which crimes actually get punished. Misdemeanors, not so high on the list.
I don’t have any sympathy for her either. I don’t really care about her one way or another. I don’t care that she’s rich, dumb, slutty, whatever.
My point is, if people are so outraged about this they should demand that the government raise taxes, or make cuts in the road or school budget in order to build a lot more jails to lock up scoff-laws.
I don’t really think anyone wants to do this, but you can’t gripe about truncated sentences without the countpart.
Our long national ordeal is finally over. Liberty, Fraternity, Inequality.
Perhaps a day of mourning is in order.
I also can’t work up much outrage over this.
I think it’s a bit ridiculous that once you actually sentence someone to forty days in prison to let them out after three. However, I’m still not convinced we really needed Paris Hilton in jail over what she had done.
She had a DUI and subsequent probation, then she violated said probation. I’m just not sold that warrants 40 days in jail under our current legal system.
In my ideal legal system DUI would be mandatory 30 days jail, no early release, no possibility of a suspended sentence, no possibility of getting out early on good behavior. Primarily because it’s been my experience that a lot of people who commit DUI, and not just Paris Hilton but regular people too, are habitual offenders.
I have a cousin who I believe was convicted of over ten DUIs and many other drunk-behavior related offenses before, ten years ago his license was revoked for life (prior to that it had been revoked for ten years and he’d just legally gotten it back after a 10 year hiatus when he was arrested for his 12th or 13th DUI.)
Over all those offenses my cousin, who is your average Joe (albeit an alcoholic one) spent I believe a total of maybe 40 hours in jail, for over 10 DUIs.
I understand why these situations happen, and it’s because of jail overcrowding. I wish there was a way to treat people who drive while under the influence in a harsher manner, but I think the penal system is just too overcrowded to do that at present. With that in mind, I really can’t work up outrage that Paris got off “relatively easy.” I think the only reason she was given jail time at all is because she had shown contempt for the legal system and that pissed the judge off.
Why in the world didn’t she hired a full-time staff of chauffeurs after the first DUI (or before, for that matter?) She could have a car and driver on standby for any minute of the day she decided to go out, and she never would have had this problem.
Who’s asking for your sympathy? All I’m saying is that 23 days in solitary confinement for driving with a suspended license doesn’t fit my definition of “preferential”.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but it was my understanding that for these sorts of offenses, they DO stack up in terms of severity. Your second DUI is not just a DUI, punished with the same sentence as every other DUI. It’s an escalation of the problem, with a harsher sentence. Likewise repeat probation offenses.
This is why I’m a little confused when people talk about comparing her case to other cases: which ones do they mean? Do they mean similar single violations of probation? Or do they mean a violation that comes on top of escalating driving offenses?
In any case, if I turned my nose up at the food in prison, I have a very, very, very, very hard time believing that I would be sent home with a note for my parents and an ankle bracelet.