Paris Hilton’s reassignment to “home confinement” after just three days may make the judge who sentenced the hotel heiress to 45 days so mad that he could order the Hollywood bad girl to pack a toothbrush again, Dan Abrams, NBC’s chief legal correspondent, said Friday on TODAY.
“The judge in this case is angry. That could be really bad news for Paris Hilton,” said Abrams, who is also general manager of MSNBC.
Judge Michael Sauer had specifically ordered that Hilton, who violated her probation by driving with a suspended license after a drunken driving conviction, not be allowed to serve her 45-day sentence at home with electronic monitoring.
Hilton, 26, was ordered to return to court on Friday after Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo challenged Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s decision to reassign Hilton to house arrest because of an undisclosed medical issue, the celebrity news Web site TMZ.com reported.
Several mental health professionals reportedly visited Hilton during her brief stay at California’s Century Regional Detention Facility. It is not clear whether reports that Hilton was close to having a nervous breakdown contributed to Baca’s decision to reassign the fashion model and reality TV star to house arrest.
Since Hilton was sent to her Hollywood Hills home on Thursday, the public outcry the apparent kid-gloves treatment given to her case is reaching a deafening level.
“Some people are going to say, ‘Look, these jails have mental facilities; they have doctors there,’” Abrams said. “‘Other prisoners just have to deal with the medical staff they have,’”
“Bottom line, in your gut, do you think she’s going back to jail?” TODAY host Matt Lauer asked.
“Believe it or not, I do. I think this court is so angry at the fact that they specifically put in the order ‘no monitoring bracelet,’” Abrams said.
Celebrity Justice?
The latest saga in Hilton’s very public life is rekindling debate about whether celebrities get special treatment.
“I think if Paris Hilton was a 20-year-old black kid from South Central [Los Angeles], I don’t think they would have slapped a monitoring bracelet on him and sent him home,” said radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, who also appeared Friday on TODAY. “The public outcry here is another example of America thinking that celebrities get special treatment.”
Ingraham added, “I think a lot of people out there would have no problem with some of these marauding spoiled-brat celebrities having a LoJack slapped on the permanently.”
Roy Black, a criminal defense attorney who has represented Rush Limbaugh, William Kennedy Smith and other high-profile clients, said Hilton has been treated harsher than similarly situated defendants.
“There’s no doubt about it. Nobody gets 45 days in jail for driving under a suspended license after a DUI probation,” Black said.
California’s jails remain overcrowded, he added, and authorities routinely release non-violent female offenders early to make room for more-hardened criminals. Sending Paris Hilton back to jail to quiet the public outcry, would be wrong, Black said.
“What are we going to do, let Charlie Manson out so we can put Paris Hilton?” he said. “This is absurd.”
Absurd or not, interest in Hilton’s plight isn’t waning. The media has been camped outside her home and the courthouse, and the public is anxious to see whether the judge on Hilton’s case will get to the bottom of why the sheriff’s department decided not to follow his wishes.
Mystery medical condition
It is not clear whether the judge will force the sheriff’s department to disclose Hilton’s mystery medical condition in open court, but one expert noted that merely being unhappy or even having severe anxiety would not constitute a medical or psychiatric diagnosis.
“There days in prison can be very hard, very stressful, that that in and of itself wouldn’t create a new psychiatric diagnosis,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist and TODAY contributor.
Saltz said she hopes girls who may look up to Hilton and others celebrities who get in trouble do not learn the wrong lesson by this episode.
“My concern is for all of the young girls out there who unfortunately may still idolize these very disturbed celebrities who are having great difficult,” Dr. Saltz said. “They may look up to them and say, ‘I should be like that. And this just shows me the great thing to achieve is fame, and then you can have anything and the rules don’t apply to me.’”
Abrams said the sheriff’s department made a mistake. “I think it is amazing that we’re in LA and you have a sheriff’s department who seems to have not realized that there was going to be a major fire[storm],” Abrams said. “They could have said, ‘Yes, it’s 23 days but keep in mind she could get out earlier.’ There was no statement of that, no warning, no heads up … I think it was just a major, major mistake.”
Hilton is scheduled to appear in court at 12 p.m. EDT, 9 a.m. PDT.