CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Thu. Jun. 7 2007 8:50 PM ET
Paris Hilton has been ordered back to court to decide whether she should return to jail, after Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said she could serve her sentence under house arrest.
Hours after Hilton was released Thursday, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo asked Judge Michael Sauer to hold a hearing on Friday to review Baca’s decision.
“The city attorney filed a petition for an order to show cause why the sheriff should not be held in contempt for releasing Ms. Hilton, and demanded that she be held in custody,” Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said late Thursday afternoon.
Baca released Hilton after she had served just three days in jail because of a “medical condition.”
Unconfirmed reports from the gossip website TMZ.com allege the condition was psychological, not physical.
Judge Sauer, responsible for sentencing Hilton to county jail, apparently did not give his consent for her early release.
Delgadillo released a statement to TMZ.com, saying he was “extremely troubled to learn that the Sheriff’s Department has decided to release Ms. Hilton from custody.”
He added he was “concerned that the judicial process may have been improperly circumvented in this case. Ms. Hilton was incarcerated as a condition of her probation. As a result, the judge retained jurisdiction over her case and only the judge has the power to modify these conditions of probation.”
L.A. County Sheriff’s office spokesperson Steve Whitmore called the release a “re-assignment.”
“After extensive consultation with medical personnel…. it was determined that Paris Hilton would be reassigned to a community-based alternative custody electronic monitoring program,” he said Thursday.
“And what that means is this… she will be confined to her home for the next 40 days.”
Whitmore said he could not disclose what the medical condition was because of privacy issues.
“I can’t specifically talk about the medical situation other than to say that, yes, it played a part in this,” he said, although added it was not a staph infection.
Star watchers believe Hilton’s dramatic decline in health was a convenient excuse to get an early release.
“She met with a psychiatrist yesterday in jail so people are speculating she was just too depressed to stay in jail any longer. She certainly appears to be physically healthy, we saw her on the red carpet for the MTV Movie Awards Sunday evening; hours before going to jail,” Jill Dobson, news and style editor for Star magazine, told CTV Newsnet from New York.
“Everything slides off Paris and this is one more example of that,” Dobson said.
Hilton, originally sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case, was expected to serve a reduced sentence of 23 days in prison.
Hilton will be confined to her home and equipped with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
“She was transported out of here by us and then there was a transference to her attorney and then she was taken home,” said Whitmore.
The bracelet will limit Hilton to a distance of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, which will confine her movements even within her family’s luxurious mansion.
“Her house is much bigger than that, so she will actually have a problem. She is going to have to tape off certain areas of her home where she won’t be able to go without going out of range,” Dobson said.
The 26-year-old celebutante turned herself in at the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles just after 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night.
Then she was escorted to the all-women’s Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood just after 11:30 p.m., where she was booked, fingerprinted and issued a jail uniform, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
The “Simple Life” star was being housed in the “special needs” unit of the 13-year-old jail, separate from most of its 2,200 inmates.
The unit consists of 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates.
Entertainment insiders believe the value of Hilton’s post-jail interview will plummet, as will the value of the diary she was supposed to write while incarcerated.
“The value of that diary certainly took a nose dive because of this,” Dobson said.
“Now she can’t write about the never-ending weeks of prison time and she won’t be able to talk about her interaction with other inmates because really she was by herself for about three full days.”
Hilton was reportedly not sharing her cell with another inmate.
She was permitted to take her meals in her cell and was allowed to venture outside the 12-foot-by-8-foot space every day for at least an hour to shower, watch TV in the day room, participate in outdoor recreation or talk on the telephone.
Hilton has also had to do without her beauty accessories since the prison does not allow such things as curling irons, rollers, hair brushes, hair sprays, hair dye, tweezers, razors, hair removal wax and mirrors.
Officers arrested Hilton in Hollywood on Sept. 7. In January, she pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of the alcohol-related reckless-driving charge. She was sentenced to 36 months’ probation, alcohol education and $1,500 in fines.
But the heiress was pulled over again by California Highway Patrol on Jan. 15.
Officers informed Hilton she was driving on a suspended license and she signed a document acknowledging she was not to drive.
Then again on Feb. 27, she was pulled over by sheriff’s deputies, at which time she was charged with violating her probation.
A traffic court judge ruled on May 4 that Hilton violated her probation and sentenced her to 45 days in jail.
With files from The Associated Press
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