L.A. City Attorney Rocky DelgadilloCrash and burn: Nothing compelled Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to join the fray in objecting to Paris Hilton’s early release from the county jail earlier this month.
Judge Michael Sauer, whose sentence was curtailed by the decision to let Hilton serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest, called a hearing into the matter and had it under control.
But Delgadillo (“Del-gah-dee-yo”) weighed in for no reason other than to cash in on the national publicity around the case.
Now it appears inserting himself into the Hilton case may have permanently sidelined his ambitions for higher office. Here are headlines from this month in the Los Angeles Times that tell the story:
- June 12: Delgadillo won’t identify driver in ’04 crash. We later learn the driver was his wife, Michelle, and she was driving city-owned SUV. Oh, and it turned out she was caught driving with a suspended license — the same crime for which Hilton went to jail — in 2005. Michelle Delgadillo’s license was suspended when the Yukon was damaged.
- June 13: Delgadillo fined $11,450 for 30 counts of campaign finance law violations. Unrelated but what incredibly bad timing.
- June 19: Delgadillo admits wife drove city SUV. At the news conference, he also admitted he’d driven without insurance, which is illegal, for over a year. Michelle was also uninsured when she wrecked the city-owned SUV.
- June 20: Delgadillo’s wife named in 1998 arrest warrant. Michelle had “an outstanding warrant for her arrest for failing to appear in court nearly nine years ago on charges of driving without insurance, with a suspended license and in an unregistered car … In addition, documents obtained by The Times show that in the last three years the Delgadillos were chronically late in paying fines for at least five parking tickets.
- June 21: Delgadillo’s wife pleads no contest in ’98 traffic case. No jail time for her.
- June 21: Delgadillo used his staff for baby-sitting, errands. A violation of city ethics rules.
- Today: Ethics panel, state bar probe Delgadillo.
Delgadillo has had his eye on higher office. Last year, he ran for California State Treasurer in the Democratic primary, losing to former Gov. Jerry Brown, who went on to win the general. Now he’ll be lucky to keep his job through the next city elections.
It didn’t have to be. For one thing, if Hilton had been a regular non-celebutante citizen, she would have spent zero minutes in jail, according to L.A. County Sheriff Lee, the man in charge of the jails here.
If you doubt it, watch this video of Baca saying Hilton would not have gone to jail if she were a non-celebrity. (Starts at 04:18.)
Is this clown related to Mike Nifong, the infamous prosecutor of the non-existent “Duke rape case”? What an ass he is. Now I suppose he’ll write a book.
Nope. Paris went to jail for DUI. She’d simply lost her parole when she broke the driving laws and got caught twice more. If she hadn’t been on parole when she got caught driving without a license, she wouldn’t be in jail.
I’m disgusted when people ignore the facts in order to defend Paris.
Smash the DA all you want, but at least do it with accurate facts.
It never ceases to amaze me how these politicos get in so much stupid, easily-avoidable trouble! For example, what’s with Rocky and Michelle’s driving habits? Man, what a couple of GEMS! They must have ROCKS in their heads. You’d have to really work at it to be that careless about insurance and tickets; the wrecked SUV is just ICE-ing on the cake. Was Michelle listening to ROCK when she rolled it? She really took her husband’s office for GRANITE. Who do they think they are, The upper CRUST? These JEWELS have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble that could have been easily avoided. I’m STONE cold serious, let me make it CRYSTAL clear, Rocky has less than ROCK solid judgement for such a public figure who should be the BEDROCK of the community. It would be a TRAVERTINE of justice for him to stay in office, so he should be left off the SLATE during the next election; his career deserves to be on the ROCKS as his credibility is not worth a lump of COAL.
…And we care about Paris Hilton, why? and we care about Rocky the buffoon, why? Let them both eat cake, and then disappear from our consciousnesses, please.
Nope, Jim. It’s you whose facts are wrong (including Delgadillo’s role; he’s the city attorney not a county D.A.). I’m not defending Paris Hilton. My feelings about her are a notch above dislike: apathy. However, in this instance, the facts favor her position, and I think we have to treat everyone equally before the law — across the spectrum from Osama bin Laden to Paris Hilton.
It happens that I live in West Hollywood and the over-crowding in the jails in Los Angeles County is an on-going story around here. People with minor violations such as Hilton’s are processed in and out within hours, every day. She and her lawyers knew this when she was sentenced. They had a reasonable expectation she would serve no time — and had her name been “Sharon Pilton,” she would have been fingerprinted and sent home.
Jim, if you had clicked through to the links I offered in my post you would have seen that court orders and consent decrees going back 20 years force the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. to release offenders booked on lesser charges immediately because our jail system lacks the capacity to handle the number of prisoners one might expect in a population of 10 million. This crisis is propelled by the fact that every attempt to raise taxes from the 10 million taxpayers in the county to build new jails fails.
Here is Sheriff Lee Baca, the man in charge of the Los Angeles County jails, describing how the federal consent decrees force him to handle non-celebrity prisoners booked in on minor offenses like Hilton’s:
Starts at minute 04:18:
Transcript:
LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF LEE BACA: The only thing that I can detect that is special treatment is the amount of her sentence, because under our 10 percent early release program, she would have not served any time in our jail or would have been put on a home electronic monitoring system. So the special treatment [garbled] appears to be her celebrity status. She got more time in jail.
Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2007:
Los Angeles Times: May 14 2006
Ok, so the system worked AGAINST Paris BECAUSE she is a wealthy celeb instead of the other way around… Well, boo-hoo-hoo, poor little rich girl! I’m sorry, this comment is contributing nothing to the argument that minor offenders are doing little or no jail time, but an old Irish saying goes something like this; “You can’t wish evil on anyone, but if it happens to them you can sure enjoy it.” Oh, BTW, sorry ’bout the networks not having a bidding war over you, Paris…