What a shameful day in jurisprudence.
I live in Los Angeles County. I pay taxes here. So, when I awoke today to see the debacle that is the Paris Hilton case unfolding nonstop on CNN, I was horrified. Not for Paris, although I think this has gone WAY too far for her original infraction. Let's remember, her charge was DUI / Reckless driving. First offense, and she said she only had one or two drinks. Given the .08 limit here and her body weight, quite possible. Then, for this, her license was suspended. OK, DUI is a serious crime. I get it. Obviously, she didn't because she then drove, and was pulled over, and sentenced to 45 days in jail. She served five of the 23 (time off for good behavior) and then was remanded to house arrest for "psychological and physical" reasons. The prosecutor got pissed, the judge (who had said no house arrest) got pissed and now Hilton has been dragged, literally, in handcuffs, back to court.
Of course, the media has descended, and the Los Angeles County Courthouse now has extra staff to deal with the deluge. This means thousands of taxpayers dollars are being spent on this, that these sheriffs aren't doing other duties and that a system that is already strapped for cash is spending money it doesn't have. And for what? Because the judge is angry at Sheriff Lee Baca for giving celebrities special treatment? Well, then take it up with Baca and don't take it out on Hilton. At this point, one can't help but feel sorry for her.
What's worse is the misallocation of my money. First of all, the cell that she occupies would be better served, given jail overcrowding, with a REAL criminal in it. The streets are no safer with Hilton in jail versus her home. Second, stop all this "if this were you or I" crap. First of all, it isn't. Being rich does have benefits. Secondly, if it were you or I, we probably wouldn't have gotten such a stiff sentence for such an infraction. These are misdemeanors as far as I can tell. And now, she's going back to jail.
Why? Truly, why? Because she's a rich bitchy heiress and we like to knock down those we build up? Let's remember, she's a woman. A scared woman.
I don't like her, but I feel very sorry for her right now. She's a public spectacle and needlessly so. The judge was mad and took it out on her.
So tens of thousands of dollars spent, prosecutors time taken up, court time taken and for what? To punish an heiress. How shameful.
First of all, I don't want to pay for Hilton to be in jail. Let her staff cook for her. Let her people look after her. Given her crime, mandatory alcohol counseling, community service, a fine and house arrest seems fair. Or an alcohol monitor of some kind for 90 days (they have those now, strapped around the ankle, detects if you sweat alcohol). But jail? No one was injured, no one died, no thousands of dollars of damage from her crime.
Second, what if she is really mentally unstable right now? Why not let her doctors take care of her, and the let the ones at the L.A. County Jail, the largest mental health care provider in the State of California, deal with the people that suffer not only from criminal behavior but from a system that no longer takes care of its mentally ill in facilities other than jails.
According to Sheriff Lee Baca, Hilton has "severe issues." Also, according to Baca, she is a "low level offender, who typically spend about 10% of their time due to overcrowding." Stop me if I'm wrong but five days is about 10% of 45. And in comparison while Hilton was being dragged through the mud, right across the hall was another trial, this one for Jason Wahler, one of the stars of "Laguna Beach." He was there for, guess what, a parole violation stemming from being arrested for criminal trespassing and assault in Seattle earlier this year, which violated his probation from a September 2006 battery arrest in Los Angeles. The 20 year old, who was admonished by the judge not to drink any more, must continue attending AA meetings and 36 more hours of anger management classes. He will also have to continue with intensive rehab counseling at least four days a week. Wahler attended another rehab earlier in the year to avoid a 60-day sentence in L.A. County Jail.
Hilton, on the other hand, was thrown in to jail for violating her parole for the original charge of reckless driving. Her second offense was driving with a suspended license. So the guy that does criminal trespass and battery doesn't serve a day, and Paris is humiliated and dragged off to jail all by the same judicial system, same county. Sound fair?
The fact is people are loving seeing her dragged through the mud like this. The same people that built her up are loving her downfall. And it's sad.
What's sad is that she's being made an example of and her punishment does not fit the crime. It's like Martha Stewart. There are corporate heads out there that do far worse than she, and they don't get arrested, they get government contracts.
Paris Hilton should be home, with electronic monitoring, footing the bill (no pun intended) for her misdemeanor. And the judge should not have given her such a severe punishment in the first place. This same judge should not have made a spectacle and mockery of Los Angeles County Sheriff and criminal justice system by holding a hearing, demanding Hilton be brought in in handcuffs, causing traffic jams, hundreds of spectators which take resources to control, wasting a prosecutor's time and taking up a jail cell in a place where 90% of the criminals there are there for, according to Baca, murder charges, attempted murder charges, battery, robbery--you know, real crimes. The streets of Los Angeles are no safer with Hilton in jail. It serves no purpose.
So the world got to watch the tribulations of the spoiled rich girl and a judge got to send a message that even celebrities get treated equally. Well, they don't so no matter how he punishes Paris OJ is still playing golf in Florida.
The city has spent enough on sending messages. It's time someone send them one: tell judge Sauer to cool it, put Paris at home, and get back to the business of defending our streets, some of which are so gang-infested they aren't safe to drive down at night, and open up that prison cell for a woman that truly deserves it. And as for the Prosecutor, the caseload in L.A. County is well-known and the resources of the office thin. Is this really valuable time spent? Are you running for something later?
Stop it. All of you. Really, it's getting embarrassing.