I want to take the cowardly route and say that it’s only because I’m a lawyer and have an interest in the legal issues that I’ve started reading about the case . . . but that’s too much like an evangelist saying he had to study a lot of pornography videos in order to know what he was fighting against – or a local State Representative here who explained after being taped soliciting sex from a policewoman posing as a prostitute that he was out hiring prostitutes in order to bring them to religion.
I therefore add that it’s not only because I’m a lawyer that I’ve become interested in the misadventures of naughty Paris Hilton. As a fiction writer I think it is a fascinating story which has reached a crucial juncture: Will the spoiled, rich young heiress – hitherto depicted enjoying a pampered life of incredible luxury and voluptuousness -- who is now genuinely suffering severely because of her flippant flouting of the law -- discover in this shocking experience new insights into herself? Will a process of self-examination bring about the change in her character which creative writing teachers say is required in this type of novel? After all, she did have herself photographed carrying a copy of “The Power of Now” to jail, although it seems unlikely that she stayed off the telephone long enough to read any of it. The Perils of Paris really do make a fascinating psychological study. Oh . . . and yes, sometimes I enjoy looking at her despite a feeling of faint nausea.
EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE JAILBIRD
The first legal question that attracted me was how a sheriff could ignore a judge’s order where the judge specifically ordered that the convicted person was to stay in jail and not be moved to house arrest. In my experience – which included a lot of appellate work in criminal cases – a judge’s order always prevails. A sheriff on the county level takes care of all of the details of the prisoner’s incarceration and applies written laws and rules to treatment of the prisoner and any early lawful release, but the sheriff cannot disobey or overrule the explicit provisions of a court order. If a judge says, “Without possibility of parole” it means, “Without possibility of parole.” Los Angeles may, however, provide a kind of Disneyland version of the law which would not be found in other areas. So far I haven’t been able to locate an informed legal analysis of the situation there.
The question I want to ask in this post is below this report from the ‘Los Angeles Times’:
‘A sobbing Paris Hilton was shipped back to jail Friday, culminating a high-stakes legal showdown between a judge and Sheriff Lee Baca over who controls how long and where inmates serve their jail sentences.
The questions have loomed large over the Los Angeles County justice system for years as judges watched in frustration as the sheriff slashed the sentences they handed down, often by 90%, to alleviate chronic overcrowding in his jails.
[Sheriff] Baca defended his decision to let Hilton leave jail and said he was concerned about how Sauer's order — if copied by other judges — would affect the jail system.
"This has the strong potential to set up what will become an untenable precedent because of overcrowding in jail and the lack of adequate housing," Baca said in an interview.’
My question is: If jail overcrowding is such a big factor, why did the sheriff assign Paris Hilton alone to a 2-person cell with no cellmate?
