Paris Hilton - Out of jail after 3 days???

Cafe Society
161

To be fair, that particular loophole was not created for Parasite. Many, many inmates have benefited from it.

From where I stand, the LAPD can pretty much wave bye-bye to whatever credibility they’ve recovered after the OJ trial and that other trial. The sheriff overstepped his authority. He can modify conditions of sentencing, he can add to them, and he can indeed diminish them – as long as he does not contravene the judge’s orders. The judge specifically said “No electronic monitoring or house arrest in lieu of incarceration,” and the sheriff reversed that. And due process was not followed. And he’s a Scientologist.

And is anyone else suspicious about the other news story today? As far as timing goes, I wonder if the announcement about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs being replaced was originally scheduled for Monday, but moved up to today, when TPTB knew it would be buried?

162

The judge is my hero! He’s not taking any crap, nor should he.

Maybe Daddy promised to give some money to the $cienos.

163

I was thinking more like they wanted to recruit Parasite. But whatever.

Also, a retraction. This has nothing to do with the LAPD. Please disregard what I said about their credibility. Everything else stands, though.

164

The LAPD and the LA County Sheriff are seperate agencies. The Sheriff has no authority over the police.

165

The LAPD has their own problems. Leave 'em alone. :slight_smile:

166

Yes, I just now retracted that.

167

Whoa, whoa, wait a minute there.

Are you telling me this guy is a scieno? I know he is a worthless law enforcement officer who’s main passion is to shake down the taxpayers by threatening to release prisoners, murderers and rapists first, and I know he is cozy with the clams, but is he actually a member?

This guy needs to be recalled, pronto.

That being said, Paris Hilton is being treated unfairly. If it was you or me we would have been kicked after 5 days just like she was. LA county has no room for that kind of thing, and everybody knows it. That is one reason that many have abandoned any pretense of obeying traffic laws.

Y’all come drive here sometime. Just when you think you have seen it all, someone does something even dumber right in front of you and there is never a cop around. What’s the point? Write a ticket, ticket ignored, but so what? There’s no room at the inn so Mr. Traffic Warrant serves maybe a day or two. Usually they get kicked as soon as they process in without spending one minute in the prison proper. Now the public has realized the traffic officer is nothing but a paper tiger, so anything goes!

A couple of days ago, I was at a red light. The guy next to me is in the left turn pocket, controlled by an arrow. He gets the green arrow for the left and very swiftly and deliberately swerves in front of me and proceeds against the red light to go straight. I get the feeling he uses this “shortcut” all the time. I see this kind of crap all the time now.

Baca is bad, but Chief Bratton is no better, his men hate him and he is a big puss. Our mayor is going to be indicted someday. Our entire City Council and County Board of Supervisors are filled with morons and lunatics, mostly the two combined.

I challenge any doper to find a city with more idiots in charge. For every story of stupidity, I am sure I can trump you twice over with what goes on out here. I mean, they spent weeks and still couldn’t decide what color to designate the new light rail line to the west side :rolleyes: This while the city goes to hell in a handbasket and they are wasting time on this. I mean, wtf does that conversation even go like? “I don’t think it should be purple” “Teal is too close to blue and we already used that!” “What about green, have we used green?” Give me a frickin’ break.

LA is a real hole, and it is getting worse, and it is because our government is full of utter tools, and has been for a long time. God, look at our recent police chiefs, Gates, Williams, Bratton, I mean give me a break. Gates was a moron and a Nazi, Williams was just a moron (which he continues to prove himself to be as a councilman), and Bratton is like a deer in the headlights who has no concept of how to deal with being in a public position, or what to say to the press, and hasn’t the cajones to back up his officers. It all is making me sick, so I will just post this before I kill myself. :wink: I really can’t stand the stupidity any more.

168

Yeah, but how many other prisoners were released from their private cells in that facility at 2 AM on Thursday morning in order to relieve the over-crowding?

169

First, let me say that I am no fan of Ms. Hilton. In fact, I smirked as much as anyone when she was initially sent to jail. However, a few days of mulling this whole scenario over has led me to a change of heart that surprised even me. Allow me to elaborate:

  1. The prevailing sentiment appears to be “Well, if it was you or me, we’d still be in jail”. This is untrue. It is common practice to release inmates early due to overcrowding, sometimes after serving only about 10% of their sentence. Yeah, I know it happened at 2 AM; the point is, it happens frequently to ordinary people as well.

  2. It is appearing to me that this judge is just as much of a media whore as Paris. He wants to make an example of her and establish himself as a tough jurist. My question is, how sad-ass is your law career if you’re looking to make your judicial bones from Paris Hilton ?

  3. Exactly what is accomplished by sending her to jail in the first place? When Naomi Campbell was prosecuted for assaulting her assistant with a cell phone (a much more serious offense, IMHO), she was sentenced to a week of cleaning up a maintenance depot in NYC. You have your requisite punishment, attendant humiliation, and she actually did something productive to work off her sentence. How about she picks up trash off the highway or spends a week washing RTD buses or something worthwhile?

I think the LA law enforcement and judicial communities are still trying to make up for OJ and Robert Blake.

170

You might be interested in reading Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities in which the protagonist, Sherman, a wealthy New York socialite, is arrested.

The details of his arrest are pretty disgusting (yet not actually dangerous), but what really blew his character’s mind was the process of not owning himself, of being the property of the State. Sherman had spent a great deal of energy insulating himself from “them”, making himself part of the special and elite (in his internal dialogue, he called himself a “Master of the Universe”).

Once arrested, though, he was powerless. People whose existence he wouldn’t have acknowledged were now calling him by his first name, telling him where to go, touching him.

It changed him instantly.

171

Probably more than is accomplished by sending her home and making her promise promise promise that this time, no seriously, this time she’ll really abide by the terms of her probation, honest, no foolin’.

172

The sympathy shown for her in this thread is bizarre to me. And I’m not the type of person to take joy in another’s suffering.

Have you ever seen a 12 year old whose parents have always spoiled her and gave her her way constantly? She’ll act like a sociopathic little brat with no empathy for anything and only concerned about what she wants.

So what happens when the parent tries to get a little spine and punish her for something? Maybe ground her? The kid will cry hysterically to emotionally manipulate the parent into caving in, which they almost always do. And the kid generally stays a horrible person throughout their lives.

How is this situation any different at all? Even down to the cries of “mommy!” in the court room? She’s been spoiled and has gotten her way all her life. One time someone is stepping up and not letting her get her way, so she freaks out about it. Why is that deserving of sympathy? How is Paris, 26, acting any differently from the behavior of a 12 year old spoiled brat?

I mean, if she was going to death row or something, her situation might be sympathetic. But she’s going to a resort jail for special people for a few weeks, which is honestly probably no worse than a 12 year old being sent to her room and grounded. And she’s crying like the spoiled little brat she is. She might deserve sympathy in the sense of “wow, look at how her upbringing has turned her into a horrible person”, but certainly not “aww, she’s emotionally distressed because she’s not getting her way”.

173

Point taken. But let’s put this in perspective–how many non-violent first offenders have you ever seen sent to jail? OK, maybe the “my assistant told me it was OK to drive” excuse was kinda flimsy, but people have been let off without actual prison time with a lot lamer excuses than that.

What it boils down to, IMHO, is that perception trumps reality every time. By making an example of someone like Paris, the perception that the system works is preserved. Checking the recidivism rates among violent offenders tells a very different story. Look how many DUI’s get arrested over and over again, only to be released to drink and drive some more, many times with a suspended or revoked license.

As I said earlier, I have no particular love for Ms. Hilton, but this seems to me to be nothing more than feeding the “common people’s” perceived need for payback at the expense of the “privileged class”. What is forgotten in all this mess is that, as distasteful as Ms Hilton is to most people, she is still a human being and I believe she does not deserve this type of treatment any more than you or I were we to make a simple mistake that ultimately didn’t hurt anyone.

174

Damn, but some of you are mean.

And what that judge did was unnecessarily cruel. I’m betting that in the next 6 months he will be changing jobs or venue.

I’m wondering what’s going to happen. Will the Sheriff start releasing all of the judge’s prisoners abnormally early? Or will he make them serve every damn second of their sentence?

That will start a stampede with either the DAs or the PDs getting their cases off his docket.

Then when there’s a bench warrant I’ll bet the deputies will be busy doing other work. If they want to screw that judge, they will. If he has delusions that he’s Roy Bean and a hanging judge, he’s going to be taught a lesson. It gets lonely when the help stops helping.

175

I don’t have any personal knowledge of how many offenders are sent to jail, so I won’t comment on that. I don’t think our legal system should work on a basis of punishing Peter lightly because Paul got away scot-free. If the sentence on the books says X, they get X. If the good behavior clause says they get X reduced by Y, they get X - Y. In this particular case we had a sheriff who thought that X was inconvenient and arbitrarily changed it to Z without regard to the sentence handed down, without following accepted procedure.

You appear to be arguing that because recidivism is high on DUI offenders, they should be treated more leniently, thus letting Paris go. That would only serve to create the illusion for other DUIs that the system doesn’t work, wouldn’t it? Public perception of a high-profile case cuts both ways — enforcement pacifies the law-hungry majority, but lack of enforcement encourages the lawbreakers.

She didn’t hurt anyone this time. That is through no particular skill of her own. Many DUIs get lucky. That doesn’t mean we should slap them on the wrist and say “no harm no foul,” because when luck runs out, you get to be like my uncle and spend months trying to recover from someone else’s DUI.

176

No freakin’ kidding! What the hell does she deserve sympathy for?? The stupid bitch broke the law, and then gave the finger to the system. THREE times! I don’t care how many OTHER people break the law or what happens to them. THIS time, a law-breaker is getting what they deserve. Actually, less than they deserve, but then, I take DUI and DWI’s very very seriously, unlike, seemingly, many of you. And yeah, I’ve driven impaired back in my misspent youth, and I’m damned lucky I never got caught or hurt anyone. If I had done either I would have deserved the harshest possible sentence.

One day she’ll probably kill someone while driving drunk. I wonder if she’ll get sympathy then. I wouldn’t doubt it. The skank (ass herpes, ha!) seems to hypnotize people into submissive adoration for some ungodly unknown reason.

177

Even the best prison time has got to be far worse than a sex tape being leaked.

178

How, exactly?

If he added more sentence time on account of what the sheriff did, then that’s misguided. But why is enforcing the sentence he originally ordered, that was cut early by a sheriff who happens to take the maximum possible donation from her grandfather, cruel?

The sheriff didn’t just release her, like she was free to go. He changed the sentence from being in jail to being in home arrest. The judge specifically wrote that this could not be done. The sheriff screwed up here.

And we’re not talking about San Quentin here. We’re talking about a cupcake prison where people better and more important to us normal folks go. She’s flipping out because it’s the first time in her life that she didn’t get her way, and she’s acting exactly like a spoiled child. Can anyone here draw any difference between her behavior and a child having a tantrum? Seriously.

179

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said here, and like Naomi, when Paris is done with this for good and signed out, she should leave the building in a KICKASS DESIGNER GOWN!

Oh, and FTR, I think Paris should be punished to the fullest extent of the law for any and all crimes she’s committed. I just don’t think the machinations going on in this case AFTER SHE WAS SENTENCED is fair to her or anyone else.

The sheriff’s *possibly * being influenced by money/pressure notwithstanding.

180

How are they mean? You’re kidding, right? Oh, well, maybe I have to explain it to you.

Anyone who gloats at another person’s suffering is mean. If I had children that did something wrong I would do what I needed to to teach them what was right. I wouldn’t enjoy making them suffer. I wouldn’t mock them if they cried. I wouldn’t tell them that it was finished and they could go, then sucker punch them when they turned to leave.

And the judge is going to find out he doesn’t work in a vacuum. He may have complete sayso in his courtroom, but the Sheriff runs the jail. He’s supposed to stay on his own side of the street.