Paris Hilton’s Possible Sentencing Draws Massive Crowd

LA Times: Hearing started at 1:30pm

Reporters gathered at an obscure traffic courthouse south of downtown L.A. today waiting to find out whether Paris Hilton will be sentenced to jail time for a drunk driving violation last year.

Construction workers building a parking structure across the street from the courthouse yelled “Jail time!” to the group of more than two dozen TV crews stationed in front of the court. Hilton was not expected to arrive until just before the 1:30 p.m. hearing.

Some people who had other business at the court were not happy about how the courthouse seemed turned upside down for Hilton’s arrival.

“Upstairs, they are telling us how we should treat everyone equally with fairness and justice,” said Rocco Jimenez, 21, a juror on another case. “Now, here they are shutting down one whole entrance for one person. It’s ridiculous. This is the way we do the justice system in L.A . There’s no place like it.”

Her arrest occurred Sept. 7 when LAPD motorcycle officers, who were on patrol about 12:30 a.m., saw Hilton’s Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren moving erratically.

They pulled the car over near the intersection of Selma and Wilcox avenues and performed several field sobriety tests before handcuffing and arresting Hilton, authorities said.

So many celebrity photographers swarmed the traffic stop that police had trouble doing their job. The surreal quality of the incident continued at the stationhouse, where reporters and photographers created such a ruckus that the watch commander warned that camera flashbulbs could cause accidents on the street.

Inside, police did what they do in most cases, administering a Breathalyzer test to Hilton, which showed that her blood-alcohol level was on the wrong side of California’s legal limit of 0.08%.

Hilton was booked on a misdemeanor charge and released. She ran the press gauntlet with an entourage that included publicist Elliot Mintz and sister Nicky Hilton.

The city attorney’s office has asked the Superior Court judge to jail Hilton for 45 days because she violated the terms of her probation for an alcohol-related reckless driving conviction. They also asked that she stay away from alcohol for 90 days, wear a monitoring device and have her license suspended for an additional four months.

latimes.com