Don't expect other inmates released early from the Los Angeles County Jail to be thrown back in to serve their full sentences, despite what happened to Paris Hilton.
That's the consensus among top judges and prosecutors who say there are a variety of practical, political and legal issues that prevent challenging Sheriff Lee Baca's policy of releasing inmates well before their sentences end.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday July 03, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
Paris Hilton: Articles in The Times about Paris Hilton's jail sentence have given differing accounts of how long the hotel heiress spent behind bars the first time before Sheriff Lee Baca released her. Hilton entered custody at 11:15 p.m. on June 3 and was released early in the morning of June 7. The Sheriff's Department credited her with five days in jail, but she actually served less than four full days.
Many of his colleagues privately applaud the decision by Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer to return the hotel heiress to custody after she was released after spending less than four full days in jail on a 45-day sentence. But judges said the practical realities of jail overcrowding and the fact that judges rarely learn when defendants are released mean there is little they can do to halt the practice.
Court administrators insist that most judges also appreciate the difficulties that confront the sheriff in trying to manage an overcrowded, violence-prone jail system that is the largest in the country.
"This has been a give and take for the 19 years that I've been on the bench," said Los Angeles County Presiding Judge J. Stephen Czuleger. "There's occasional frustration among individual judges, but they recognize that we're both part of a large system ... and at the end of the day they have to make sure that the system doesn't collapse."
Lawyers in the Los Angeles city attorney's office, which prosecuted Hilton and sought her return to jail, also warned against viewing the 26-year-old's courtroom drama as a test case.
In the Hilton case, they said they had a strong legal argument to challenge Baca because the sheriff cited undisclosed medical problems in his decision to send her home with an electronic ankle bracelet. Sauer had specifically ordered the sheriff not to release her early or to allow her to go home on electronic monitoring.
But in the vast majority of early releases, the Sheriff's Department cites overcrowding concerns as the reason. The department has freed inmates early for nearly 20 years under a federal court order that requires it to relieve overcrowding.
City prosecutors said they were reviewing whether they could ask the federal court to add guidelines to the order that would ensure that more dangerous offenders serve more of their time. Until then, they said, Baca has the final word on who can be released and when, despite what state judges say.
