Hotel heiress Paris Hilton, who commanded as much attention behind bars as on the Hollywood party scene, regained her freedom on Tuesday after serving three weeks in jail for violating probation in a drunken-driving case.
The incarceration of the 26-year-old multimillionaire, who has lampooned her own persona as a clueless child of privilege on the reality TV show The Simple Life, ignited a worldwide media frenzy and debate about celebrity justice.
Hilton was released after 22 days in detention, including a day she spent under house arrest. The original 45-day sentence set by the judge was effectively cut in half under a standard credit applied for good behaviour.
Hilton was released from jail at about 12.15am local time and walked alone down a walkway lined with photographers and camera operators. She made no statement and smiled broadly before joining her parents, Kathy and Rick Hilton, in their waiting sports utility vehicle.
Hilton’s stint behind bars, which a Los Angeles Times analysis found far exceeded the sentence served by most county inmates for similar offences, stemmed from her arrest last September on a charge of drunken driving.
In January she pleaded no contest — the equivalent of a guilty plea under California law — to a reduced charge of alcohol-related reckless driving and was sentenced to three years on probation. The following month, she was caught driving on a suspended licence.
At a hearing in May, the judge ruled that constituted a probation violation and ordered her to jail for 45 days, rejecting Hilton’s defence that she had been misinformed about her licence status by her publicist.
Her lawyers vowed an appeal and supporters launched a petition seeking clemency. But Hilton checked into a county detention centre near Los Angeles late on the night of June 3 to begin her sentence.
Just hours earlier, the willowy blonde, whose great-grandfather, Conrad, founded the Hilton Hotels empire, had walked the red carpet at a Hollywood awards show where she was the butt of jokes on national television.
After Hilton had served just three days behind bars, county Sheriff Lee Baca released her to house arrest under electronic monitoring, citing unspecified medical problems later described as psychological. Hilton has since said she suffers from claustrophobia.
Her ”reassignment” drew immediate fire from prosecutors and the sentencing judge, who ruled the following day that Baca had exceeded his authority and ordered the distraught socialite back to jail to complete her term.
She was sent to the medical unit of another jail before being transferred back to the prison where she began her detention. — Reuters