LOS ANGELES – Hours after Paris Hilton was sent home under house arrest Thursday, the judge who put her in jail for violating her reckless-driving probation ordered her into court to determine whether she should be put back behind bars.
Hilton must report to court at 9 a.m. today, Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said.
“My understanding is she will be brought in in a sheriff’s vehicle from her home,” Parachini said.
Superior Court Judge Michael Sauer issued his order after the city attorney filed a petition late Thursday afternoon questioning whether Sheriff Lee Baca should be held in contempt of court for releasing Hilton on Thursday morning.
The celebrity inmate was sent home from the Los Angeles County jail’s Lynwood lockup shortly after 2 a.m. for an unspecified medical condition in a stunning reduction to her original 45-day sentence.
She was ordered to finish her sentence under house arrest, meaning she could not leave her four-bedroom, three-bath home in the Hollywood Hills until next month.
“What transpired here is outrageous,” county Supervisor Don Knabe said, adding that he received more than 400 angry e-mails and hundreds more phone calls from around the country.
Hilton’s return home gives the impression of “celebrity justice being handed out,” he said.
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo complained that he learned of her release the same way as almost everyone else – through news reports.
“It is the city attorney’s position that the decision on whether or not Ms. Hilton should be released early and placed on electronic monitoring should be made by Judge Sauer and not the Sheriff’s Department,” said Jeffrey Isaacs of the city attorney’s office.
Sauer himself had expressed his unhappiness with Hilton’s release before Delgadillo asked him to return her to court. When he sentenced Hilton to jail last month, he ruled specifically that she could not serve her sentence at home under electronic monitoring.
Parachini said Sauer reminded the Sheriff’s Department of that when he learned Hilton was about to be released.
“He reiterated the terms of his sentencing order. He did not agree to the terms of release that the sheriff proposed,” Parachini said before Delgadillo asked that Hilton be returned to court.
But, Parachini said at the time, it is the sheriff and not the judge who decides when inmates are released from jail.
Delgadillo’s office indicated that it would argue that the Sheriff’s Department violated Sauer’s May 4 sentencing order.
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