Paris Hilton Back in Detention Facility
LOS ANGELES - With her medical condition now stabilized, Paris Hilton has been transferred back to an all-women’s jail after nearly a week in a medical ward, a sheriff’s official said Thursday.
Hilton was brought late Wednesday to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood and placed in the medical clinic there. If all goes well, she will return to the jail’s special needs unit and be released June 25, spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
“Her condition is stable” but she will continue to be monitored, Whitmore said.
The 26-year-old socialite and reality TV star began her 45-day sentence June 3 at Lynwood, where she was confined to a solitary cell in the special needs unit away from the other 2,200 inmates.
After three days, Sheriff Lee Baca sent Hilton home for an unspecified medical condition that he later said was psychological.
Baca has said he made his decision after learning from one of her doctors that she was not taking a certain medication while in custody, and that her “inexplicable deterioration” puzzled county psychiatrists.
Baca’s decision caused a firestorm of criticism over whether Hilton was getting special treatment.
Judge Michael T. Sauer, who specified at Hilton’s sentencing last month that she not serve time at home or with the use of electronic monitoring, sent her back to jail last Friday, saying he hadn’t condoned her release.
Hilton was taken to the downtown Twin Towers jail, which houses men and the county’s medical treatment center, where she underwent medical and psychiatric exams to determine where she should be held. Hilton’s stay there cost taxpayers $1,109.78 a day, more than 10 times the cost of housing inmates in the general population.
Hilton failed a sobriety test after police saw her weaving down a street in her Mercedes-Benz last September. Hilton pleaded no contest to reckless driving and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
In the months that followed she was stopped twice by officers who discovered her driving on a suspended license. The second stop landed her in Sauer’s courtroom, where he sentenced her to jail.
Calls to a Hilton spokesman and a Hilton attorney were not returned Thursday.
Meanwhile, the first step was taken towards a campaign to recall the sheriff. County officials said they had received a “notice of intention” for a recall. The notice says Baca should be recalled in part because of the Sheriff Department’s failure to ensure the safety of inmates and “selectively enforcing the laws with an uneven hand.”
Once the notice is certified, campaign organizers have 160 days to collect 395,000 voter signatures to put the recall on a ballot.
By ROBERT JABLON
